
Book E^^LA- 

GoipghtN»_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



JESUS CHRIST 

AND THE 

CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 



WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 

TYPICAL MODERN CONCEPTIONS OF GOD — With 
A Constructive Essay. 1901. 

PERSONALITY AND REALITY — A Treatise of 
Metaphysics. {In preparation . ) 



JESUS CHRIST 

AND THE 

CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

THE ETHICAL TEACHING OF JESUS 

CONSIDERED IN ITS BEARINGS 

ON THE MORAL FOUNDATIONS 

OF MODERN CULTURE 



BY 
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY 
IN HOBART COLLEGE 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD. 

1907 

All rights reserved 



"6^ V 



V 



UBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Coole? Received 

MAY 14 1907 

Copyriffht Ef»!rv 

CLASS ^ XXc, No. 

COPY B. 



Copyright, 1907, 
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1907. 



Worfaoatr tSresa 

J. 8. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



:t oi^ 




MY DEAR WIFE 

''''Das ewige Weibliche 
Zieht uns hinan " 



PREFATORY NOTE 

As indicated by the title, the scope of this work 
is limited to a consideration of the ethical teach- 
ings of Jesus Christ in their bearings on the spirit- 
ual life of civilization. No account is taken of the 
external events of Christ's life or of his deeds, 
except in so far as has seemed necessary to inter- 
pret the meaning and application of his teaching. 
No questions of dogmatic theology are directly 
considered, nor, on the other hand, does the author 
mean to imply that there may not be aspects of 
that life, of deep significance for the individual 
and the church, that lie beyond the purview of 
the present work. He is simply concerned here 
with ideas that seem to him to be of broad and 
primary significance for the entire moral founda- 
tions of western culture. He has felt compelled 
to take some account of eastern culture, since the 
two are now meeting in the world-arena. He has 
done this with diffidence, since his knowledge of 
the East is purely literary. 

The primary aim of the work is practical, and 
it is addressed to all intelligent persons who are 
honestly and open-mindedly seeking to determine 
the relation of the words of the great Master of 
Life and Rehgion to their own lives and to the 



Vm PREFATORY NOTE 

complex and confused life of contemporary civil- 
ization. Hence, technical discussions in biblical 
criticism and in philosophy have been, so far as 
possible, avoided. Philosophical questions have 
been dealt with as briefly and clearly as possible. 
If the style of treatment may savour, to the 
specialist, of dogmatism, the author's reply is that 
he has threshed out, to the best of his ability, 
questions at issue in the philosophy of mind in a 
forthcoming work. To the specialist in New 
Testament criticism and theology the author would 
say further that, while he has avoided burdening 
a work of popular character with references, he 
has considered in great part the recent literature 
both German and English. 

But the writer's wish will be satisfied if some 
intelligent seekers after truth in matters of conduct 
and life are led to a fuller appreciation of the 
present significance of the teaching of Him whose 
words are " Spirit and Life." 

Geneva, New York, 
January lo, 1907. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Prefatory Note '^^ 

CHAPTER I 
Purpose and Standpoint of the Present Work i 

CHAPTER n 
Nature and Human Nature 22 

CHAPTER HI 
The Heart of Man 35 

CHAPTER IV 
The Conduct of the Individual Life ... 56 

CHAPTER V 
The Conduct of the Social Life .... 89 

CHAPTER VI 
The Imperfections of Life 120 

CHAPTER VII 

The Idea of God ^39 

(1 ) The Idea of God in General . . • ♦ i39 

(2) JesusMdeaofGod .150 

(3) The Problem of Evil ^S7 

ix 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VIII 

PAGE 

The Influence of Jesus' Teaching and of Other 

Ethical Systems i66 

CHAPTER IX 

Jesus Christ and Other Founders of Religions 179 
(i) Personality and the History of Religion . . 179 
(2) Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha in History . 185 

CHAPTER X 
The Final Significance of the Personality of 

Jesus Christ 215 

APPENDIX. Ethics and Eschatology . . 225 
INDEX TO NAMES AND SUBJECTS . . .243 
INDEX TO TEXTS 247 



JESUS CHRIST 

AND THE 

CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 



JESUS CHRIST AND 
THE CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

CHAPTER I 

INTRODUCTORY : PURPOSE AND STANDPOINT OF THE 
PRESENT WORK 

The aim of the following work is to offer an in- 
terpretation of the fundamental ethical principles 
of Jesus in their bearing on the problems of social life 
and individual destiny as these present themselves 
to the men of to-day. In estimating the meaning 
and value of any historical phenomenon we neces- 
sarily begin with the life, experience, and ideas of 
to-day. The past only gains meaning and worth for 
us as we bring it into living filiation and continuity 
with the present. This is even more deeply true of 
moral and spiritual history than of political and 
economic history. It seems to the present writer 
that no better test can be made of the permanent 
worth of the gospel of Jesus than that of deter- 
mining how it bears on the moral and spiritual prob- 
lems of life to-day. For the gospel is life, not theory. 
Although it involves theoretical propositions, it does 
not in itself consist primarily of theoretical propo- 
sitions. The gospel of Jesus is a way of conduct, an 

B I 



2 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

attitude oj soul or spirit, and as such it must be 
judged. 

The aim of the present work, then, is twofold. It 
seeks to discover the fundamental ethical needs of 
contemporary life, to determine by what principles 
of conduct the spiritual character of man and of 
civiKzation may be best preserved and developed. 
And it seeks to determine the bearings of Jesus* 
ethical teaching on this spiritual life of to-day. 

I have attempted to bring out only the fundamental 
principles of Jesus' teaching, in their relation to 
contemporary tendencies of conduct and of ethical 
thought. The application in detail must be left 
to the reader. And here I believe I am in accord 
with Jesus' own method. Although he teaches by 
parables and single instances as well as by explicitly 
formulated principles, what he conveys is in every 
case a dynamic principle or spiritual ideal of conduct. 
The gospel is no system of casuistry, no network 
of minute and iron-bound prescriptions. Jesus 
supplies the quickening leaven ; but it is an essential 
feature of his ethical teaching that the individual 
shall in each specific and concrete case direct his 
own actions by conscious and free thought and de- 
cision in the light of the principles laid down. The 
active participation of the whole personality is fun- 
damental to right living as Jesus sees it. 

The traditional ethics of Christian civilization are 
on trial to-day. No doubt the mass of men still as- 
sume their validity and pay them the tribute of at least 



PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK 3 

a theoretical recognition. But the conduct of men is 
in part actually guided by widely different motives 
and the authority of other than Christian principles 
begins to be boldly announced in some quarters. 
When Nietzsche proclaims the absolute supremacy of 
the stronger and more intelligent, exceptional indi- 
vidual, the " Over-man," over the mass of his fellows ; 
when he attacks the Christian ideals of s}Tnpathy and 
service as the most egregious blunders in the mat- 
ter of conduct that man has ever committed ; when 
he finds in the assertion of the authority of these prin- 
ciples the conspiracy of the mass of weak men against 
the few strong; of the ''domesticated human animal" 
against his natural and rightful lord, the exceptional in- 
dividual, strong, cunning, and dominant, — Nietzsche 
is but drawing the correct ethical consequences that 
follow from the exclusive claim that the Darwinian 
doctrine of evolution, or the science of biology in 
general, is able to yield us a new sufficient and sci- 
entific ethics. And, in our practical, political, and 
commercial life, where Nietzsche has never been 
heard of, the catchwords of biological science are 
frequently employed to justify political oppression, 
industrial and civic wrong- doing. 

We are told that the conquest, exploitation, and 
subjection of weaker and less enlightened peoples 
by the culture-nations of Europe and America is the 
''natural," and therefore inevitable, outcome of the 
"struggle for existence." The fittest survive, and 
the weaker must go to the wall. So it is in nature, 



4 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

and so it must be in human society, we are told. 
The ''trust," too, is a product of "evolution" and, 
if it crushes out competitors here and there by 
methods which the old-fasliioned Christian moral 
consciousness revolts against, why all this is " natu- 
ral " and " inevitable " I The labor union often seeks 
to justify intimidation and personal violence on the 
same grounds. 

If men in business and in poUtics use lying and 
corruption, fraud, and "graft," to gain their ends, 
we are told that the "machine" is a necessary politi- 
cal device or that the "system" which exists must 
be conformed to and those who do business or go into 
pohtics must adopt the methods that have been 
employed and that have actually proved successful. 
And, in truth, our fundamental principle of ethics 
threatens to become the universal doctrine "that 
nothing succeeds Hke success." Now, there is 
no system of morality to be drawn from the foci 
of the survival oj the fittest in the struggle for exist- 
ence. For the fittest means nothing more in nature 
than the fact that certain species have actually sur- 
vived. The fitness or goodness which consist simply 
in the survival value indicated by the power of ad- 
justment to the natural environment have nothing 
to do with moral worth. Morality does not begin 
until we leave the realm of mere brute facts and judge 
in terms of ideal worth or value. 

The naturahstic tendencies, to which I have briefly 
referred, are sufi&ciently symptomatic of our time. 



PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK 5 

No doubt, traditional Christian ethics, as an inherit- 
ance from the mediaeval world, drew too sharp 
an antithesis between the natural and the spiritual. 
For example, the assertion of the higher spiritual 
virtue of cehbacy over the married state was a great 
error. The separation by mediaeval ethical thought 
of the higher spiritual realm from the sphere of com- 
mon human activities and interests in family, com- 
munity, state, science, and art set up a mistaken 
dualism that had serious consequences for history, 
consequences that our ci\dhzation is only beginning 
to recover from. Some of these consequences were 
— the vague and negative meanings attached to 
spirituahty and the spiritual Hfe in many quarters, 
the tendency to ascribe a magical efhcacy to rites 
and ceremonies as means of snatching the soul from 
an evil world, the failure of the churches to make 
themselves effective forces in the evolution of con- 
temporary civiHzation, their failure to welcome 
and to sanctify democracy as the direct consequence 
of the Master's teaching, and gladly to meet science 
and scholarship as instruments by which the spirit 
leads men into the truth that makes them free. We 
are learning better to-day, although we are still 
prone to identify heathen and mediaeval motives 
and principles with the ethics of Jesus himself. 

But, under the influence of biological philosophy, 
used as a tool to justify the selfish and power-lo\dng 
ruthless instincts of the natural man, modern society 
swings toward the other extreme. Our civilization 



6 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

is threatened by an ethical materialism, for wliich 
there are no limits of acquisition and indulgence 
except those of cunning and power. The ethical 
antithesis now stands between biological egoism 
and Christian altruism. Shall individual or national 
success be constituted the sole warrant of right, or 
are there universal ethical principles of righteous- 
ness? Shall the individual obey without stint his 
own selfish desires, shall he follow without limit 
his own immediate interests regardless of the well- 
being of others? What is the relation of the indi- 
vidual's action to social welfare and social righteous- 
ness? And back of this antithesis lies the more 
fundamental question, wherein consists the true 
essence of the individual ? Has he a spiritual being 
or is he but a fleshly tissue, warmed by feeling, 
lighted up by consciousness, and aided in the strug- 
gle to gain mere life, by the auxihary instrument of 
reason? Is reason but a tool for the increase of 
sensuous pleasure, and the diminution of pain? 

The fundamental problems of ethics and reHgion 
are, in a final analysis, those of the real nature and 
destiny of the individual man. Our ethical prin- 
ciples must in the last resort depend upon our con- 
victions as to the relation of the human self to the 
natural order or cosmos, and upon its relation to 
the world of spiritual values and ideals wliich have 
been built up in the course of civilization through 
the teachings and activities of moral and religious 
leaders. 



PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK 7 

If the ethics of traditional Christianity are on trial, 
this means that the most important spiritual constit- 
uents in the personal and social Hfe of our civihza- 
tion are on trial, too. And in this critical juncture 
we must, in order to determine anew what is per- 
manent and pertinent in Christianity as a civilizing 
and ethical force, go back of the traditional Chris- 
tian ethics, which is intermingled with many other 
elements, to the ethics of the founder. For the ethical 
conceptions that began to prevail in the church from 
the second and third centuries onward (indeed, one 
might say to some extent from the latter part of the 
first century), that held sway during the Middle 
Ages, and are still by many identified with the gospel, 
are really a compound of Jesus' teaching with that 
oriental dualism which had its several manifestations 
in Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, Mithraism, etc. ;^ 

* On the relations of Zoroastrianism and Primitive Christianity 
see two articles by James Moffatt, in the Hibbert Journal, Vol. I., 
No. 4, and Vol. II., No. 2 ; on Mithraism see the little work by 
Franz Cmnont, The Mysteries of Mithra, a resume of his larger 
work on the same subject ; on the general subject see A. Harnack, 
History of Dogma, Vol. I. (English translation), and the same 
writer's The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Cen- 
turies. On the subject of Persian influence on Jewish religion in 
New Testament times see W. Bousset, Die Religion des Jtuien- 
thums im Neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, Zweite Aufiage, 1906. Of 
course, as one leaves Apostolic Christianity behind and goes 
forward through the history of thought and practice in the 
second, third, and fourth centuries, the influence of this oriental 
dualism becomes more pronounced in Christian thought and 
practice. Indeed, the same is true of purely Hellenic thought. 
How much more dualistic in both speculative theory and in prac- 



8 JESUS CHRIST AXD CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

and which filtered into Greek thought through the 
mysteries and through later Neoplatonism, spread 
over the Roman Empire, cropped out even in the 
teachings of St. Paul, and, through the influence of 
St. Augustine and his successors, left its powerful 
and morbid heritage to modem theology, and even 
gained a speculative outcrop in Descartes' philosophy 
of mind and body. 

The absolute metaphysical duahsm of mind and 
body, the absolute ethical duahsm of flesh and 
spirit, the absolute theological dualism of God 
and the denl, has been in principle overcome by 
modem thought. WTiat remains then of the su- 
premacy of the spirit ? Is the latter but a product 
of natural forces ? The same question in philosoph- 
ical form becomes this — is the mind a function of 
the bodily organism? And in theological guise — 
is God simply the order of physical nature ? 

I am comanced that true and permanently valid 
answers to these questions, in so far as they touch 
the fundamental problems of conduct or ethics, will 
be found in the teachings of Jesus ; and it is in the 
light of this con\dction that I shall herein attempt to 
set forth the ethical principles of the Master in their 
bearing on the ethical or spiritual problems of con- 
temporary civilization, and more especially, of the 

tical matters is the philosophy of Plotinns than that of his master 
Plato, or of Aristotle and the Stoics ! Ancient thought dies out 
with the opposition of soul and body, good and evil, God and 
the world. 



PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK 9 

individual life. For, in the nature and destiny 
of the human person centre all the fundamental 
problems of ethics, metaphysics, and theology ; and 
the fundamental contribution of Jesus to our prac- 
tical thought and to our conceptions of things lies 
in his teaching concerning the ultimate nature and 
vocation of the human person. 

Some readers will doubtless be surprised that I 
have not entered into a discussion of the date and 
authorship of the historic records or sources on which 
I have freely drawn for my materials, and have 
advanced no hypothesis as to the relative priority 
and historicity of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I 
may as well say at once that I do not consider such 
a preliminary inquiry vital to the fulfilment of the 
aim set before me in this work. Furthermore, in 
my own opinion, apart from the external evidences 
of contemporary records, some systematic conception 
of Jesus' teaching and activity is the indispensable 
prerequisite to any sane and sober-minded discussion 
of the dates and historicity of the four gospels. The 
internal constitutions and relations of these works 
cannot be determined apart from such a conception. 
This attitude will doubtless seem to many of the 
''higher critics" of the New Testament a varepov 
Trporepov, a putting of the cart before the horse. I will 
therefore proceed to explain and defend the position. 

In the case of Jesus, as of any other great his- 
torical figure, we are dealing with a personality 
who has exerted a continuous historical influence 



lO JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

do^^TL to the present time. Great personalities are 
true historical causes. Alexander, Caesar, Charle- 
magne, Napoleon I., started political movements 
whose effects continue and can be traced backward 
from the present time. So it is in the realm of science 
with Aristotle, Archimedes, Bacon, Newton, Kant, 
etc.; in art with Phidias, Michelangelo, Raphael, 
Beethoven, etc. These individuals have been true 
historical causes, i.e. they have continued to exercise 
influence in the development of humanity. The 
lives, thoughts, and activities of the mass of lesser 
individuals have been moulded by countless streams 
of mental and moral influences whose fountain heads 
are the characters, thoughts, and deeds of great 
persons, and whose channels are marked out in the 
change and continuity of the historical Hfe and social 
institutions of mankind. These streams of mental 
influence, welling up from the mysterious fountain 
heads of human personality, have marked out their 
channels and beds in the evolution of social institu- 
tions — in the political state with its manifold forms ; 
in the various genera and schools of art ; in the com- 
mercial and industrial systems of the ages ; in the 
systematic conceptions of science as these are added 
to and modified from age to age, etc. 

Great personahties are the supreme interpreting 
and rationally directing forces in the historical evo- 
lution of man, and in any stage or phase of human 
evolution that we may select, will be found embedded 
the countless streams of tendencies that have issued 



PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK II 

from the creative individuals who have originated 
new movements in civilization or at least have altered 
the direction of old ones. 

Now Jesus is a preeminent historical force in the 
thoughts and lives of the members of our western 
ci\dlization to-day as well as in the spirit and work- 
ings of a great historical institution, — the church. 
It may be said that his influence is on the wane. 
This has often been said before. But it cannot be 
denied that his personahty is still a potent factor in 
the moral and spiritual life, both individual and 
social. 

The primary witnesses to the reality of Jesus as 
a great historical force or originating centre of spir- 
itual life are: i. The existence and experiences of 
disciples to-day acting under his leadership and 
striving to live in accordance with his spirit. 2. The 
continuity of the Hfe and tradition of discipleship 
in the Christian church. However much the church 
in its various branches may have grievously erred in 
falling away from the ethical spirit of the Master, 
however much it may in time past have forgotten 
rehgion in ecclesiasticism, ethics in dogmatic theol- 
ogy, the lowly spirit of love in the passion for author- 
ity and wealth; nevertheless, the continuous exist- 
ence and development of the church is an abiding 
historical witness to the reahty and perennial power 
of Jesus' personahty and influence in the movement 
of ci\dhzation. Here, then, we have the actual 
evidences in personal experience, discipleship, and 



12 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

in institutional continuity, of Jesus as a personal 
historical force. 

And, when we go to the earliest documentary 
records to get the details of his life, or the principles 
of his teaching, we must not forget that we have to 
do with a living personality — with an individual 
spiritual cause. We must treat this person rever- 
ently and sympathetically in the integrity of his Hfe 
and views. No one who is imable sympathetically 
to appreciate the many-sided and rich Hfe of a great 
personal leader, who may be influential in society 
to-day, is competent to reconstruct the hves of great 
historical individuals. The historian himself must 
be a man of personal caliber and the weakness of 
much so-called "higher criticism" consists in the 
lack on the part of its authors of a vital and histor- 
ical appreciation of the significance of personahty. 

In regard to our special subject of inquiry, it is not 
of first-rate importance whether Mark was written 
before or after 70 a.d., Luke and Matthew before or 
after 80 a.d., etc. The supremely important point 
is this — do we get from these first records of Jesus 
the impress of a powerful spiritual individuahty 
and a coherent and comprehensive ethical and spir- 
itual attitude toward hfe. We have, as I have said, 
in individual disciples and the continuous existence 
of the church as a factor m society our n\dng witnesses 
to the continuing personal influence of Jesus. This 
personahty has been a powerful historical cause, and 
is therefore real. And if, for our purpose, we can 



PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK 1 3 

find in the earliest records even the bare outline and 
suggestion of any system of principles of conduct, 
constituting an integral and vital whole, then these 
records must be trustworthy sources for the life and 
teaching of this preeminent historical personage 
with whom we are concerned as a great causal factor 
in the moral evolution of humanity. *'In observing 
the Uneaments of Jesus, the right focus was given 
not by his death nor even by his departure, but in 
the subsequent discipline of memory and obedience 
among his followers. Their increasing distance from , 
the object tended in some degree to correct earlier 
mistakes of judgment in the direction of exaggeration 
or of undervaluing ; by remoAing certain obscurities, 
the very lapse of time helped to purify and widen 
in the Christian community the powers of accurate 
appreciation. Hence the character and date of 
our extant gospels. Just as the full significance of 
thq traits and issues bound up in the faith of Jesus 
could not be grasped by his original disciples until 
he ceased to move beside them, — he left them and 
they knew him, — so it proved practically an impos- 
sibility for them, even after their subsequent experi- 
ence of reflection and reminiscence, to achieve the 
task of creating a final and adequate record. For 
that they could merely supply materials. It was 
enough in this for the disciples to be as their Mas- 
ter. Like Socrates and Epictetus, he was no author. 
He wrote once — and that upon the dust. His real 
epistles were to be found in the character and 



14 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

experience of his followers (2 Cor. 3:3). Nor was it 
otherwise with them. For other hands than theirs 
the work of evangeHc composition was reserved. 
It was completed, as perhaps it only could have been, 
by the epigoni. Even those who had received the 
tradition of the historical Jesus, Kara a-dpKa, from 
his personal companions, found that his Ufe in sub- 
sequent years opened out for them (John 12:16; 
14:26; 16:13); it 

' Orbed into the perfect star 
They knew not, when they moved therein.' 

But this insight of a second generation was not neces- 
sarily inferior at all points. On the contrary, it 
had some invaluable advantages. In the strict sense 
of the word, the gospels are not contemporary records. 
Even the earliest of them implies an interval between 
the facts and their record — bridged though that 
interval may be by continuous tradition and surviv- 
ing witnesses. But so far from this distance being 
an altogether regrettable defect, it is in some aspects 
a profit. Until development has reached a certain 
stage, analysis will always remain inadequate; in- 
deed, it is hardly possible for it to exist. Lapse of 
time is essential to a real conception of this as of 
any other history, for it is only after such an interval 
of experience and reflection that the meaning and 
bearings of the life in question come out in their true 
and sure significance. Interpretation is not bound 
fast to the contemporary standpoint. It requires 



PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK 1 5 

facts, but it requires them in perspective. The 
gospels in reahty do more for us, written between 
65 and 105, than they would have done if composed 
before 35. Drawn up after at least one generation 
had passed away, and written in a world rich with 
religious passion, speculation, and achievement, 
these writings give a wider and deeper account of 
their subject than any that would have been afforded 
by records composed in the morning of the Christian 
religion. During the actual hfetime of Jesus, or 
even immediately after his death, the vital principle 
of the Life was not to be grasped in its real unity and 
relationships. Paul understood the secret of Jesus 
more thoroughly than many who had trodden the 
roads of GaUlee in his company, and Ustened to 
his arguments and teaching in the synagogues ; and 
the writers of the Christian biography were not neces- 
sarily placed at any serious disadvantage for their 
task and mission by the fact that their vision was 
one not of sight but of insight, not of memory but 
of sympathy."^ ''The living do not give up their 
secrets with the candour of the dead; one key is 
always excepted, and a generation passes before we 
can insure accuracy." "Their raison d^etre lay 
in the authoritative and binding power exercised 
by the words of Jesus over the primitive community 
from the very beginning, as well as in need, stirred 
by exigencies of time and place, for possessing that 
standard in an accessible and fairly uniform shape, 

^ Moffatt, The Historical New Testament, pp. 13-14. 



1 6 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

for the purpose of personal conduct, missionary 
enterprise, and religious nourishment. The gospels, 
in fact, are the first Christian creed; they are the 
naive expression of the creed in history." ^ 

I gladly quote these passages, since they seem to 
me admirably to indicate the right point of view 
from which to consider the problems of New Testa- 
ment criticism and to be in harmony with the con- 
ception I have above outHned of the convincing evi- 
dence for the historical integrity of Jesus the Teacher 
as portrayed and reported in the four canonical 
gospels. 

It seems to me an entirely wrong-headed procedure 
to lay down in advance some preconceived canon 
for testing the genuineness of Jesus' utterances, as 
that, for instance, he could not have called himself 
the Son of God or the Son of Man in any unique 
sense. Let us first endeavour to get from the records, 
taken in their historical setting, a living impression 
of his personaHty and teaching as a whole before we 
proceed to strike out as unauthentic passage after 
passage of utterances accredited to Jesus and to 
wrest others from their obvious meanings. 

One finds among representatives of the ultra- 
critical school of New Testament interpreters to-day 
a dogmatic bias almost as strong and perhaps as 
detrimental to a full appreciation of Jesus' person- 
ality and teaching as the bias of ultraconservatives 
who tended to sacrifice the humanity of Jesus to 
^ Moffatt, op. cit., p. 27. 



PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK 1 7 

his divinity and, accordingly, conducted the exegesis 
with the presuppositions that he was omniscient 
on all matters, that every word of the New Testa- 
ment was equally inspired, and that, therefore, the 
most conflicting stories and sayings must be har- 
monized in violence to reason and all historical 
probabihty. For example, one critic, impressed by 
the eschatological character of much of Jesus' 
preaching concerning the Kingdom of God as re- 
ported in the EvangeHsts, concludes that these 
parts of the gospels must be of later origin, since 
Jesus could not have at once held that the Kingdom 
was both present and immanent and future and 
transcendent. Another critic from the same prem- 
ises concludes that Jesus was mistaken concerning 
the coming of the Kingdom. Why, I ask, could 
not a supreme religious genius, taking up the current 
eschatological notions of the Messianic Kingdom, 
have spiritualized them and taught that the Kingdom 
was at once present in its beginnings, immanent in 
its development, and future and transcendent in 
its completion? 

Again, another critical school, beginning with 
the assumption that Jesus must have regarded him- 
self simply as an ethical teacher, since he was noth- 
ing more and could not have been deceived about 
himself, goes the length of denying that he ever 
referred to himself as the Son of Man in a unique 
or individual sense or claimed to be the Messiah ; 
and argues that wherever he used the term "Son 
c 



1 8 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

of Man" he meant simply ''Man" in the generic 
sense. Such utterances as, "The Son of Man is 
Lord even of the Sabbath day" (Matt. 12:8), etc., 
can be made to square with this interpretation ; but 
it is surely doing utter violence to such utterances 
as "The foxes have holes and the birds of the air 
have nests ; but the Son of Man hath not where to 
lay his head" (Matt. 8:20) to say that here he 
means man in general. This is simply not the case, 
and Jesus could hardly have uttered such a non- 
sensical notion. Passage after passage, such as 
"The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister," etc. (Matt. 20:28), and "The Son 
of Man goeth as it is written of him," etc. (Matt. 
26 : 24), are struck out as later additions or glosses 
to his words, by critics of this type, in order to estab- 
lish their presupposition, viz. that Jesus did not 
claim to be the Messiah, and hence never referred 
to himself in a unique sense as Son of Man or Son 
of God. The latest critic who is of this way of 
thinking ^ even argues with much ingenuity that, 
although we have no Aramaic record of Jesus' 
sayings, nor (he admits) any absolute proof that he 
might not have used some other Aramaic expression 
or even a Greek expression, nevertheless, since the 
expression in Aramaic, so far as we have literary 
remains of this language, is har nasha^ which means 
not this Son of Man but "Son of Man," i.e. man in 
the generic sense, therefore Jesus must have used 

» N. Schmidt in The Prophet oj Nazareth. 



PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK 1 9 

this phrase in this sense alone. Are we then to infer 
that one, admittedly a supreme rehgious genius, 
could not have used an old expression in a new sense 
or with deeper meaning? We have no Aramaic 
remains of Jesus' sayings, but we have biographies 
in Greek, and the problem is not primarily one of 
Hnguistic but of historical exegesis and synthesis, 
i.e. of the unbiased interpretation of the sayings and 
deeds of a great historical personality. If Jesus 
regarded himself as representative and leader of a 
new humanity and as a prophet of God, what diffi- 
culty is there in supposing that he used this term 
*' Son of Man " to express at once a unique relation to 
humanity and a unique relation to God, and that 
sometimes he stressed the one and sometimes the 
other shade of meaning? 

The spiritual history of man is preeminently the 
theatre of the unique and individual, and, when we 
have to do with an individual who transcends in 
insight and influence all other rehgious teachers 
and leaders, we do violence to the integrity of his 
personality and his genius and to the genuine his- 
torical spirit when we assume that he must have 
used words that evidently were fraught with new and 
ineffable meaning for himself in traditional senses 
rigidly fixed by grammatical exegesis. Nothing is 
definitely settled as to Jesus' use of the terms 
''Son of Man," "Son of God," and "Messiah," or 
as to what these terms meant to his unapproachable 
spirit, by determining what they mean in the Book 



20 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

of Daniel or of Enoch or generally in Jewish apoca- 
lyptic Hterature, etc. In this way we leam with some 
degree of probability what these terms meant to his 
contemporaries, the Scribes and Pharisees, to his 
hearers, the common people, etc. ; but what they 
meant to Jesus can be determined only by reference 
to the unity of his historical personahty and the con- 
sistency of his teaching.^ 

I have entered into this brief discussion of matters 
not strictly germane to the central aim of the present 
work in order to emphasize and illustrate what I 
mean by saying that to understand Jesus' teaching, 
his work, and his personality, we must set to work 
without dogmatic bias and in the consciousness that 
here we have to do in a supreme degree with a per- 
sonal creative force in the historical order ; and, while 
we must not assume, without further consideration, 
that this personality is without parallel in the records 
of men, we must equally not assume that he can and 
must be levelled down to the standards of other 
masters in the same order, i.e. to the level of our 
estimate of other religious teachers, such as Moses, 
Mahomet, Buddha, or Lao-tsze. If the former 
attitude is the bias of the ultraconservative, the latter 
is just as surely the bias of the ultracritical who refuses 
from the outset to see in Jesus more than a somewhat 
exceptional man. From neither bias can one draw 
up a faithful picture of the personality of Jesus of 
Nazareth, or get a right conception of his teaching. 

* See, further, Appendix, Ethics and Eschatology. 



PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT WORK 21 

In framing this sketch of Jesus' ethical teaching 
I have drawn mainly on the synoptic gospels. But 
I have made use of the fourth gospel where it ampli- 
fies or supplements the teaching of the synoptics. 
The fourth gospel is, of course, primarily a theo- 
logical work — and indeed the greatest theological 
work in the entire history of the Christian church. 
It presents an interpretation of the universal sig- 
nificance and cosmic position of the man Christ 
Jesus in terms suppUed by Greek philosophy. But 
the theology of the fourth gospel is, nevertheless, 
based on history. It is the historical Jesus who is 
presented to us as the absolute embodiment of the 
Divine Reason or Logos. And, in dramatic form, 
we have presented in the fourth gospel historically 
trustworthy events, deeds, and sayings of Jesus not 
embodied in the other three gospels. Inasmuch 
as I am not writing a life of Christ, it does not fall 
within my plan to sift these actual events of Jesus' 
life and words as recorded in the fourth gospel from 
out their theological setting. The ultimate test of 
their historicity is their consistence with the career 
and utterances of the Master in the S3rQoptics, and 
with the records of his influence supplied by the other 
New Testament writings considered in their actual 
continuity with Christian discipleship and the devel- 
opment of the church from then until the present 
time. 



CHAPTER II 

NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 

Civilized man to-day stands at once closer to 
nature and more remote from her than stood the 
European of the Middle Ages. On the one hand 
he is less subject to nature, less the creature of his 
own impulses, less the sport of nature's forces and 
processes, less the prey of confused imaginings about 
nature, now than in the Middle Ages. He does 
not people the air with demons, the darkness with 
goblins, the waters with undines. He does not attrib- 
ute every unusual occurrence to the action of a 
spirit, nor unexplained calamities to witchcraft.^ 
He has become aware of the natural causal relation- 
ships in which all things in the world of experience 
stand to one another in a way in which even the 
Greeks, most clear-sighted of ancient peoples, were 
not. 

The modem man has learned to subdue and con- 
trol nature. He feels himself to be, by reason of his 
superior technique, her master. But, on the other 
hand, he is more clearly conscious of the many threads 
that bind him to the hf e of nature. Man has become 

* In these respects, as in many others, contemporary Chinese 
civilization shows a striking resemblance to the European Mid- 
dle Ages. 

22 



NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 23 

conscious of nature's order and systematic unity 
as the mediaeval European was not. He has learned 
how close he is to the brute in his physical origins 
and how narrow is the gulf which separates the mind 
of the child, as of the savage, from mind in the higher 
animals. He regards it as a debatable question 
whether animals reason. He has learned that the 
struggle for existence and the selection of the strong- 
est to survive holds sway in human society as well 
as in the animal kingdom. He finds that the evolu- 
lution of human society is conditioned by its physi- 
cal environment. He has learned to see in detail 
how intimate and fateful is the correlation between 
body and mind — between the processes of the cen- 
tral nervous system and the processes of thought and 
feeling. He has come to see bared the material 
roots and supports of human life, to see its super- 
structure of ideals, aspirations, and dreams, resting 
on an economic basis, and to realize what a tremen- 
dous part economic needs and struggles, arising out 
of bare brute needs and appetites, play in the total 
activity of human life. He finds that human nature 
and social customs depend in part on climate and 
food. And, above all, as the modern man looks out 
upon the natural world in its varied aspects, in the 
geologic and geographic remains of its past life and 
activities, on the varied and many-faced aspects of 
its present life in bloom and decay, in forest, field, and 
stream, in cloud and sunshine, he feels himself 
drawn close to nature through the interpretative 



24 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

activity of his ovm mind. He feels a new sjonpathy 
and kinship vdih nature, bom of an intelligent and 
ever enlarging insight into her constitution and 
processes. 

Hence the modem man feels that in the conduct of 
life he must come to terms with nature. It is no 
longer possible as it was in the IMiddle Ages to ignore 
or deny her claims on him, no longer possible to 
set the realm of grace in flat opposition to the realm 
of nature. The rational mind, conscious of the tre- 
mendous social progress made through the study 
of nature and the light shed thereby on human 
nature itself, will not admit that a full and efl&cient 
life can any longer be hved in isolation from nature 
or that to deny absolutely her claims is to Hve a 
higher Hfe. 

The raw material and basis, at least, of the ethical 
life must be found in the natural, even if we do not 
admit that the Stoic formula, "Life according to 
nature," is still an adequate and all-comprehending 
ethical maxim. It must be the function of nature 
to provide for the development of the soul. The 
spiritual life must grow out of the natural. There 
can be, it would seem, no irreconcilable conflict 
between them. For our science and philosophy 
as well as the instinctive demands of our human 
nature insist on the unity and integrity of life. We 
cannot permanently rest in dualism. We cannot 
face the everlasting and indecisive conflict between 
two hostile powers. If nature cannot be harmonized 



NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 25 

with spirit, then spirit has neither home nor basis 
of operation in this world of ours. 

Such seems to be the outcome of the modern 
attitude toward nature. And yet, so far are nature 
and human nature from displaying to the scientific 
mind a final issue of blissful harmony, that a late 
distinguished leader in the science of nature ^ has 
insisted on the radical antagonism between the 
tendencies and drift of nature and the specifically 
moral and social aspects of human life. The nat- 
ural cosmos revealed by science appears in its move- 
ment to be coldly and blindly indifferent, if not ac- 
tually hostile, to moral endeavour, and the moral and 
social achievements of mankind seem to have been 
wrought out in the very teeth of this inhuman nat- 
ural order. E\4dently, things cannot remain at this 
pass. Either we must go forward to a solution of 
the antithesis or the moral endeavour of mankind 
must seem an irrational eruption in a non-moral 
universe. 

What has Jesus to say on this point? He seems 
perhaps at first blush to countenance the indiffer- 
ence of the natural order to moral considerations. 
*'For he maketh his sun to shine on the evil and 
on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on 
the unjust" (Matt. 5:45). Superficially this seems 
in agreement with Huxley's view of the non-morality 
of the natural order. But, in reality, this saying of 
Jesus expresses a conception of nature as the mani- 

* Thos. H. Huxley in Evolution and Ethics. 



26 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

festation of a divine beneficence which transcends 
the standpoint of ordinary legal morality. The real 
universe is in Jesus' view, super-moral. It is be- 
cause of the unstinted abundance with which God 
pours out his favours that the sun shines alike on good 
and evil and the rain descends alike on the just and 
the unjust. This bounty is the expression of an 
infinite love which far transcends the hmits of a 
merely legal morahty of requital. And so nature, 
in Jesus' conception, is the expression of a divine 
meaning and beneficent attitude toward man. The 
life of nature is truly for him the basis or founda- 
tion of the human life. The closeness of man to 
nature is expressed in the numerous analogies found 
between the facts and processes of nature and the 
ideal life in the Kingdom of God. ^'The kingdom 
is like a grain of mustard seed." "It is like leaven 
which a woman took and hid in three measures 
of meal till the whole was leavened " (St. Luke 
13:18-21). 

Nature is not for Jesus foreign to, much less is 
it hostile to, human nature. He takes no ascetic 
view of natural goods and enjoyments. The chil- 
dren of the bride-chamber rejoice while the bride- 
groom is vdth them. The catastrophes and ills 
that befall man in the natural course of events are 
not visitations of divine wrath. " Or those eighteen, 
upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, 
think ye that they were sinners above all men 
that dwell in Jerusalem?" (Luke 13:4.) ''Neither 



NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 27 

hath this man sinned, nor his parents : but that the 
works of God should be made manifest in him" 
(St. John 9:3). 

In the order of nature, man must meet evil as well 
as good, pain as well as pleasure ; but, on the whole 
and from the standpoint of its divine source, nature 
is to be regarded as not hostile to and inharmonious 
with human life. It is true that there are profound 
disturbances of human life — grievous sickness, 
demoniacal possession, etc.^ These Jesus does not 
try to explain away by metaphysical quibbles. He 
heals them, but he insists everywhere on the right 
spiritual attitude. He demands personal faith or 
trust as the indispensable antecedent to healing, 
thereby pointing to the spiritual end which the suf- 
ferings of man may be made to serve. This spirit- 
ual end is explicitly stated in such words as," Blessed 
are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" 
(St. Matt. 5:4). "Blessed be ye poor: for your's 
is the kingdom of God." "Blessed are ye that 
hunger now : for ye shall be filled" (Luke 6 : 20-21). 

Throughout Jesus' teaching the idea of life plays 
the most prominent part. He sets forth the char- 
acter of the spiritual life by analogy with the natural 
life. The natural life is the basis of the ethical 
and spiritual. The latter develops out of the former. 
In both alike, singleness or integrity of function and 
aim is the condition and goal of growth. " If there- 

^ Jesus accepted the popular conception of neurotic and men- 
tal disorders as due to demoniacal profession. 



28 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

fore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full 
of light" (Matt. 6:22). 

But the growth of the spiritual man out of the nat- 
ural is not a blind and placid process which goes on 
smoothly and without retardation. There are critical 
epochs in life. Man's natural birth is a critical 
process near the beginning of his earthly life; still 
more critical is his spiritual new birth — man's 
coming to himself, his awakening to full self-con- 
sciousness of himself and of his true destiny. This 
process of awakening is beautifully portrayed in 
the story of the prodigal son. The prodigal son was 
a conscious being with the power of thought when 
he set out on his career of self-indulgence. But he 
had not really found himself, — he had not turned 
his thoughts inwards, — he had not discovered the 
vanity and pain of a life without centre, without 
integrity and wholeness. He went forth to squander 
his substance and his vitality in a career of aimless 
and disjointed dissipation, ignorant of his true 
birthright as a rational and spiritual being. 

There are three stages in the development of life. 
First is the unconscious or semiconscious Hfe of 
the lower organisms — of the Ulies of the field and 
the fowls of the air. This is a life regulated by 
blind instinct and impulse — a life in which con- 
sciousness is at best intermittent and without con- 
trolUng power. There is here no selfconsciousness, 
no deliberative choices, no pursuit of conscious 
aims. Second is the Hfe of selfconsciousness, to 



NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 29 

which the human child awakens through intercourse 
with other selves, through imitation and social 
rivalry, through combat and cooperation with its 
fellows. This is the stage in which the distinctively 
human Hfe begins. In it the individual becomes 
conscious of his several impulses and instincts, of 
their separate results, and aware of the conflict which 
these instincts engender with one another and of 
the individual with other indi\iduals. Reason now 
arises to power as the ideal of an internal harmony 
in the self and the ideal of a social harmony with 
other selves. For the reasonable Hfe in practical 
matters is a life of order and harmony. But reason 
is not yet effective to control impulse. It only 
becomes so in the third stage. Third is spiritual 
selfconsciousness — the control of natural powers 
and instincts, of natural impulse and desire, by the 
spiritual sense of a unitary life, of an immortal destiny 
realized in growing harmony with self and others. 
In this last stage alone does life become truly rational 
and get an abiding centre, a permanent controlling 
aim to be progressively realized. It is in this third 
stage that the man passes definitively from the nat- 
ural to the spiritual life. It is in this stage that 
the spirit becomes lord of the flesh — that nature 
is transformed into and subordinated to human 
nature. And it is with this last phase, with the birth 
into the spiritual life and the growth of it in the 
soul, that Jesus is chiefly concerned. 
Nature with him, then, is not hostile to spirit. The 



30 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

spiritual life, the distinctively human life, must come 
to birth from the natural, and the latter will continue 
to supply the occasion for spiritual development. 
But with the critical epoch, the new birth, the 
inward or central principle of rational self con- 
sciousness begins to control and direct the nature 
life. The latter is now first illuminated as to its 
true meaning and function. We are now able to 
see that the conflicts and shortcomings of the natural 
life are themselves but natal conditions of spiritual 
life. It is in the rational control and guidance of 
a man's native or '' natural " impulses and appetites 
that the spiritual life begins. This power of control 
is not to be gained without effort, and does not come 
at one blow. The spirit is the directive principle 
of human life — the rational conscience or heart of 
man out of which proceed the issues of life. But 
this rational spirit, too, like the lower hfe principle, 
exists at first only in germ. It too must grow, and 
that not haphazard as a wild flower grows, but by 
careful nurture. The spirit, too, must battle with 
the crude elements of existence, must toughen its 
fibre, and prove its strength in the struggle with a 
not wholly favourable environment. The glory of 
man is in the conscious life of mind, and the glory 
of mind is in its power of conscious choice and pur- 
suit of ideals ; and what most differentiates the growth 
of a spiritual manhood from all forms of merely 
natural growth is the active participation of a man's 
own will and thought in his own development. 



NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 3 1 

It is in the growth of free intelhgence and power of 
self-directing choice that man becomes at once the 
crown and interpretation of the entire evolution of 
life. The lower forms of life are plastic to their 
environments — they must adjust themselves to 
climate and food and other circumstances, or perish. 
And, even when the adjustment consists in an in- 
dividual reaction to the en\ironment, this is blindly 
performed. The actions of animals are guided 
chiefly by instinct, somewhat modified and enlarged, 
it is true, in the higher species by parental example 
and experience. But, let an entirely new situation 
arise, i.e. one not provided for by instinct or tradi- 
tion, and the animal meets the situation, if at all, by 
happy accident. Man, on the other hand, does not 
only rationally and with foresight adjust himself to 
his physical environment. He transforms it. Fur- 
thermore, he creates for himself a wholly new en- 
vironment — a spiritual atmosphere — by the for- 
mation of social institutions, by the formulation of 
ideal ends consciously sought after, by the embodi- 
ment of ideals in custom and opinion, in institution 
and law. Close as he is to outer nature, then, man 
is destined to be her master in the measure in which 
he is master of his own nature. For the power and 
influence of outer nature resides in its rapport 
or living contact with his own desires, interests, 
and aims. 

In the teaching of Jesus in regard to man's rela- 
tion to nature, this is precisely the standpoint taken. 



32 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Jesus steers a clear course between the ascetic nega- 
tion of natural impulse and desire as v/hoUy alien 
and hostile to the conscious spiritual hfe of man 
and the utter denial of any difference between man 
and the brute which would glorify mere impulse and 
desire, make the power of choice and the influence 
of reason illusory, and destroy all the painfully and 
slowly built up social institutions and ideals which 
make it possible for the child of civihzation to start 
out on a new career of mental or spiritual growth 
precisely where the savage leaves off; i.e, to begin 
life by the appropriation of a rich inheritance of 
culture stored up in social tradition. The entire 
history of human civihzation, yes, the very existence 
and progress of natural science, itself a creation of 
conscious reason, speaks against the gross misunder- 
standing of the process of evolution which would 
find a canon for human conduct in the glorification 
of the brute struggle for existence, and which would 
reverse the entire upward movement of humanity 
by reducing all intellectual and moral worth to the 
level of the crude beginnings of Hfe. The existence 
of science as well as of ci\dlization proclaims the 
mastery of mind over nature and the futihty and 
danger of regarding the intelHgence and conscience 
of man as the product and mechanical equivalent 
of mere bhnd forces of nature impelled from behind. 
Nature is lighted up, controlled, and interpreted 
by the human mind. There is a harmony between 
nature and human nature, but to this harmony the 



NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE 33 

elements and processes of nature contribute auxil- 
iary instruments — the fundamental note is supplied 
by human nature. To hve in accordance with our 
own nature we must transcend nature. Our lives 
must be autonomous, — self -legislative, — and this 
rational autonomy belongs to no merely natural 
being. 

On the other hand, in the face of man's implica- 
tion in the evolution of life, of the manifold strands 
of heritage and environmental influence which bind 
him with outer nature ; yes, in view of the very har- 
mony of his mind with the order of nature evidenced 
by the logic of evolution and the successful practical 
control of nature's processes by the human will, it 
has become forever impossible to maintain the nega- 
tive and ascetic attitude of the mediasvaUst toward 
nature. That duaHsm which would separate man 
by the whole diameter of being from the outer world 
and find the reahzation of spirit in the negation of 
nature is an anachronism. 

The true relation of spirit to nature's impulses 
and tendencies is affirmation and transformation by 
reason. The right attitude of man toward nature 
is that of intelligent control in the service of his own 
life — in the promotion of an increasing integrity 
and harmony of the rational conscious nature within 
him. 

This is the attitude of Jesus toward nature. His 
teaching here is not only modem and of present 
utility, but permanent in value. But the efficacy 



34 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

of this teaching rests on the assumption that in human 
nature there resides a unique power of choice and 
self-direction. And we must now consider Jesus' 
teaching on this point in relation to present-day 
problems and conceptions. 



CHAPTER III 

THE HEART OF MAN 

Perhaps in no period in the history of western 
thought has the nature and reahty of the freedom of 
the human will been more in debate than in the 
present time. While the movement toward poUti- 
cal and industrial freedom has progressed steadily, 
and while freedom in these relations of life now 
receives at least a wide theoretical recognition, the 
capacity of man for ultimate, self-originating choice 
and self-determining action is widely denied and, 
even where seemingly accepted in scientific circles, 
is often hedged in by so many qualifications that it is 
hardly distinguishable from the doctrine that ab- 
solute necessity rules in human actions. 

Man on his physical side seems tied and bound with 
the chains of physical causation. His bodily life 
seems but a temporary collocation of elements that 
in themselves are parts in an unbroken and unrest- 
ing process of change in the universe. The life that 
centres in an individual seems, from the standpoint 
of natural science, to be but a transient eddy or vor- 
tex in a universal stream of physical fife. The 
movement of physical science is toward the reduc- 



36 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

tion of man's physical life to the universal Kfe in 
nature, and toward the reduction of this universal 
life to mechanical processes. 

And, on the psychological side, the growing in- 
sight into the hereditary factors of mental constitu- 
tion, and the recognition of the tremendous influence 
of social tradition and environment, seem to point 
us toward the ultimate possibility of explaining a 
man's conscious life and actions wholly in terms of 
inherited tendency and of the play of those social 
influences by which the incipient desires and im- 
pulses of the self are transformed into actual motives 
of action, through the force of established custom 
and opinion and by the power of example, deterrent 
or promotive. 

I shall enter here into no detailed critique of the 
doctrine of physical or materialistic determinism. 
The grounds for rejecting the view that physical events 
determine mental processes with inevitable necessity 
I have fully given in another place. ^ Here I will 
only remark that the impossibility of explaining from 
purely physical premises how consciousness could 
arise at all, much less how knowledge could develop 
beyond the crudest and blindest sensations, and hov\r 
ideals of conduct could arise and gain authority over 
brute impulse, is the insuperable obstacle in the way 
of the materialistic theory of things. Until advocates 
of materialistic necessitarianism have advanced at 
least one demonstrable step toward overcoming this 

^ Personality and Reality (in the press). 



THE HEART OF MAN 37 

obstacle, we are entitled to accept the common con- 
sciousness that we are ourselves the sources of voli- 
tional or deliberate action, and to rule materialism 
out of court. The inward facts of attentive delibera- 
tion and choice, the consideration of alternative 
possibilities of action, the weighing of motives, the 
selection by the self of a desire, interest, or ideal for 
emphasis and affirmation in the face of strong con- 
flicting desires, and, above all, the feeling of obligation 
and power to follow out a difficult or disagreeable 
duty — these are prima facie evidence that the psychi- 
cal self is the author of its own actions. Moral 
action, i.e. the deliberate action of a conscious self, 
is self-determined action. Kant's moral argument 
for freedom has lost none of its force: ''I ought, 
therefore I can." 

But, now, what of the view which finds that, 
while rational and deHberate human choice is in- 
deed psychical or internal in origin, the psychical 
process of choice or volition is always the determined 
resultant of a variety of blind biological tendencies 
and motives that are simply the inevitable outcome, 
in this particular individual, of countless streams of 
cravings and impulses that have originated in the 
process of natural evolution and that are here brought 
together for the moment under the focal light of a 
conscious self ? 

According to this view the consciousness of free- 
dom, which a man has when he finally makes up 
his mind and lets his decision issue in overt act, is 



38 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

simply the sense of relief from the painful tension 
caused by hesitation and vacillation in thought and 
impulse. The self is distressed by uncertainty, 
torn by conflicting motives. It feels the strain of 
competing tendencies and the suspense of thought 
that is not able to reach a conclusion. Voluntary 
decision means the \4ctory of one tendency or im- 
pulse and the exclusion of all incompatible tendencies. 
This means the restoration of harmony or unity in 
feeling and the discharge of the accumulated energies 
of the whole system — muscular and psychical — 
in one definite channel. This discharge gives a 
highly pleasurable feehng of rehef, and this feeling 
gives rise to the illusion that in some mysterious 
way the essential or real self, that sits as judge and 
ruler at the centre of conscious Hfe, has somehow 
decided the whole case. But, in truth, according to 
the view we are describing, what really happens is 
that certain psychical impulses,^ which make up the 
active side of the self, are working themselves out 
to a resultant Hke any other forces of nature. The 
ensuing decision and action is the outcome of what 
physicists call a ''composition of forces." 

It is evident that the primary question at issue here 
is that of the unity, integrity , and uniqueness of the 
individual Hfe or personaHty. If the central unity 
of the indi\idual be inexpHcable and inderivable 
from biological heredity, i.e. from inherited tendencies 
transmitted through the bodily organism, and from 

^ " Idea-forces " they are called by A. Fouillee, a French writer. 



THE HEART OF MAN 39 

the influence of physical and social environment, 
then room is left for freedom as the affirmation in 
action of a spiritual selfhood. 

In entering upon the consideration of the reasons 
in favour of the uniqueness of the self, I must briefly 
mention one consideration, the full force of which 
can be appreciated only by those who give some at- 
tention to the study of philosophy. The primary 
principle on which all knowledge, hath of the phys- 
ical world and the psychical or mental life, depends 
is the conscious unity of the self in knowing. If you 
or I have knowledge, whether of a physical object 
or event, a pain or idea in our own nature, or some 
mental state of another person, this means that 
you or I know that a certain idea or mental state 
that we have is image, sign, or in some way repre- 
sentative of that fact. To know is to personally 
possess or be aware of the relation of an idea to 
something else. In other words, "Hve" knowledge, 
"real" knowledge, in distinction from the mere pos- 
sibilities of knowledge, e.g. printed books, material 
things, etc., — is possessed always by ''me," "you," 
or some other "person." I cannot fully know 
anything without knowing that I am I. Hence, 
whatever outer source my knowledge may seem to 
come from, it is not knowledge unless it becomes 
in some way a part of my personal experience. I, 
as knowing, am a single, unique consciousness. 

In a precisely similar way, "I" do not act with 
will or conscious volition, unless I have consciously 



40 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

entertained, considered, adopted, and affirmed, as 
"mine," or as satisfying my "self," some impulse, 
appetite, or desire. As a thinking being no desire 
or impulse exists except as for "me," and "I" am 
not determined from without by motives, since no 
possible action or aim is an actual motive until I 
entertain and accept it. In short, my inherited 
and inborn impulses, tendencies, desires, are without 
power and meaning in my conscious life unless "I" 
as a conscious thinking being consider them as 
possible motives to action, as desirable aims for 
"me." 

Voluntary action is meaningless without the re- 
action of a unique, thinking principle or "self" 
to whatever stimulus, impulse, or incitement may 
be present in consciousness. The whole realm of 
conscious and volitional activity loses the quaUty 
which distinguishes it from the blind unconscious 
movement of physical forces when the "self" is left 
out of account. But are not the character of thought 
and the controlhng practical interests, opinions, and 
aims in the individual determined by social tradi- 
tion and opinion? In answer to this question it is 
to be said, first of all, that the emphasis on social 
tradition and environment, on estabhshed custom, 
law, and opinion, on training in home and school, 
etc., as influential factors in determining the conduct 
and opinions of the individual, is often carried too 
far to-day. This emphasis on social environment 
often leads to a denial or neglect of the part which 



THE HEART OF MAN 4I 

individuals play in creating, transmitting, and 
amending social tradition, custom, and opinion. 
The individual is regarded as a purely passive thing, 
a wax tablet or a sheet of blank paper ; in short, as 
not in any sense an individual or independent centre 
for psychical reaction to stimulus from without. 
Out of this inert, shapeless, featureless X, society, we 
are, in effect, told, shapes what is called an individual. 
The absurd conclusion follows that, since society 
is only another name for a group of interrelated 
individuals, every individual is created by the actions 
of other individuals equally as inert and featureless 
as himself. In other words, by adding together a 
number of zeros we get a positive quantity. Society 
can hardly hold together and develop on the eco- 
nomic principle of those islanders who are said to 
subsist by taking in one another's washing. 

After all, the actual vitality and potency of social 
tradition and custom in matters of conduct, as in 
other spheres of social influence, depend on their 
active assimilation by individual minds and on their 
reexpression through the reaction of relatively self- 
dependent individual wills. While the main lines 
of a given social tradition, in manners, speech, 
politics, morals, or rehgion, may be transmitted 
from generation to generation, yet the tradition is 
constantly undergoing modification by the reactions 
of a variety of individuals. Moral traditions change 
slowly, yet how great has been the influence of 
Socrates, Plato, the Stoics; of Moses and the He- 



42 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

brew prophets; of St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Fran- 
cis, Savonarola, Luther, Carlyle, Ruskin; of Mo- 
hammed, Confucius, and Buddha? In the face of 
the notorious conservative and resistive power of 
rehgion in society what revolutions were wrought by 
Isaiah, Hosea, Amos, and Jeremiah ; by Mohammed 
when he destroyed the fetichism and polytheism 
of his tribesmen and swept away the corrupt Chris- 
tianity as well as the heathenism of surrounding 
peoples ; by Luther, Calvin, and the English reform- 
ers, when they set going movements that broke the 
power and destroyed the unity of the mediaeval 
church ? How great the poHtical influences of Peri- 
cles and Alexander, Julius Caesar and Charlemagne, 
of Pitt the Elder and Napoleon the First, of Mazzini 
and Cavour, of Bismarck and Lincoln? How 
great and rapid the transformations wrought in 
industrial methods by great inventors and organizers ? 
How great the influence of Shakespeare and Goethe 
in literature, of Raphael and Michelangelo in paint- 
ing, of Beethoven and Wagner in music ? 

Now, every individual, however humble, when 
he exercises his power of reason and choice, when 
he comes to self-consciousness, becomes in some de- 
gree an independent centre of reaction to social 
tradition and established custom. He reacts to 
these influences in his own unique way. He may 
accept entirely the principles of action current in 
his social atmosphere ; but, even if he be a conform- 
ist, he at least acts with conscious reason. He con- 



THE HEART OF MAN 43 

sents and conforms as an individual, and, as such, 
contributes his own part to the on-going of the social 
life in which he moves. He may assume a more 
or less critical or reformatory attitude, and thus ma- 
terially modify existing customs and opinions. He 
may, wdthin the limits allowed by the powers that 
be, exercise a hostile and destructive influence on 
tradition, such as we find men doing in the realms of 
political, intellectual, and theological theories. Hume 
and Voltaire, for example, by their destructive criti- 
cisms, cleared the air for new constructive movements. 

It is given to every man, who will enter into his 
spiritual birthright as an individual, to make his 
own reaction to the influences which surround him. 
In fine, it is a one-sided truth to say that the individ- 
ual's freedom of action is Hmited by social tradition 
or custom, by the influence of the social atmosphere 
which he breathes. The other side of the truth is 
that social custom, like inborn natural impulse, is 
occasion, material and stimulus, for that free activ- 
ity of the individual by which he enters into pos- 
session of his spiritual nature and so becomes truly 
a person. 

Let us now turn to the influence of heredity on 
character. In the first place, there is even less 
evidence that acquired mental characteristics are 
directly transmitted from the parent organism 
than that acquired physical characteristics are. In 
the second place, while we find a frequent resem- 
blance in mental traits between parents and children^ 



44 JESUS CHRIST AXD CmiLZATIOX Or TO-DAY 

this can be explained simply as the persistency of 
original variations. Thirdly, every genius bom of 
obscure parents, indeed every man of talent who is 
of commonplace origin, is an evidence of striking 
congenital variation. .\nd the originality of a new 
indindual is not destroyed, even if we are partially 
able to explain his new tendencies as the resultant 
of the combination of qualities from each parent. 
For the fact remains that these quahties are in him 
combined in a new and unique unity of psychical 
life and consciousness. 

Over against the failure of the scientific deter- 
minist to account for the unity and uniqueness of 
the psychical indi^idual, we are entitled to set the 
immediate and inexpugnable consciousness of the 
indixidual that ui his attentive consideration of the 
problems of his life, in the acceptance or rejection 
of ideal standards, in short, in rational choice and 
dehberate action, he is a real and unitar}' centre 
of conscious action. The reahty of human freedom 
in any \ital sense depends on the real and persistent 
imity of the self. The consciousness of this origina- 
tive and self-determining imity is common to all men 
having the power of reason and the sense of moral 
obligation. It is only weakened and rendered doubt- 
ful by sophisticated reflections in the absence of 
urgent need for decision and action. When this 
urgent need arises the scientific determinist, too, acts 
as if he were the responsible author of his actions, 
and society treats him as if he were. 



THE HEART OF MAN 45 

The consciousness of personal freedom and re- 
sponsibility will still find its witness in the stress and 
crises of Hfe, in moments when the various currents 
of our being meet in conflict, when we are conscious 
of making momentous decisions and when the wholly 
inner and spiritual, but no less undeniable, appeal 
and authority of ethical principles or ideals stand 
in unflinching opposition to the lures of appetite, 
self-interest, and creature ease. And this practical 
witness to freedom, in view of the part it plays when 
life runs high and we feel masters of ourselves, still 
has a right to be heard in the decision of the philo- 
sophical problem. 

In truth, this immediate consciousness of free, self- 
originating activity is the intuition of a vital and 
dynamic unity 0} life in us. In his deeds man feels 
this dynamic unity, and therefore, when he reflects 
on these deeds, he refers them to himself and accepts 
the responsibility for them. Our sense of account- 
ability for our actions is strong precisely in propor- 
tion to our immediate feeling of the vital and dynamic 
imity of our conscious selfhood. 

It is a perfectly legitimate procedure for the psy- 
chologist to analyze the stream of human conscious- 
ness into various aspects — sensations and impulses, 
images and precepts, concepts and judgments, 
feeHng- attitudes and strivings, emotions and 
sentiments, etc. We are not concerned here with 
the question what particular scientific analysis 
may be most adequate and workable. But it must 



46 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

not be forgotten that the actual self antedates this 
analysis or dissection, and that these various psy- 
chological aspects are not independent elements 
by whose composition the unity of the psychic in- 
dividual is constituted. If they are taken as actual 
independent elements, the actual self is resolved 
into a bundle of fictitious abstractions. But if 
they are regarded simply as artificially isolated 
features of a living and dynamic unity of selfhood, 
these aspects of consciousness, reached by psycho- 
logical analysis, have not only a warrant in the 
scientific need for analysis, but they also contribute 
to our practical knowledge of the complex life of 
consciousness by giving us a more exact insight into 
its modes of behaviour. And, just as the actual 
living and functioning organism precedes and is 
the presupposition of anatomical dissection, so the 
reality of the various aspects of consciousness, viz. 
sensation, thought, and feeling, and the existence 
of a real and intelhgible mutual relationship or 
reciprocal influence amongst them, presupposes the 
basic unity of the psychic life underlying and mani- 
festing itself in them. The actual self, which realizes 
itself in manifold processes and activities, is deeper 
and more comprehensive than any single aspect or 
so-called element of consciousness. It is the con- 
tinuous bearer of these varying aspects. Hence when 
our psychological and sociological analysis has done 
its work of splitting up the individual soul into a 
manifold of distinct aspects, tendencies, etc., and 



THE HEART OF MAN 47 

has showTi the dependence of this manifold on the 
influence of other psychic individuals as well as on 
social traditions; in order to get back the reality 
imphed in all this analysis and genetic explanation, 
we must return to the dynamic centre or unity of 
psychic life, which is the presupposition ahke of 
scientific analysis and of the actual development of 
selves in society. 

It is in the immediate feeling of this dynamic and 
continuing unity of rational life that the root of the 
belief in the freedom of the will is to be found. Con- 
sequently the sense of freedom is strongest when life 
runs highest, when the individual feels the stirring 
of new depths within himself, when fresh possibilities 
of choice and action are welUng into consciousness. 
In short, when man feels afresh the worth of life and 
the fundamental significance of its problems, he feels 
most his power of self -direction. Now it is precisely 
to this sense of inward freedom and worth that Jesus 
appeals. He rests his call to repentance, his rebukes 
for wrong-doing, his summons to face about and take 
up a new life, on the sense of accountability and the 
power of snaking a fresh start, which is what the com- 
mon man understands by freedom. Furthermore, 
Jesus requires that the individual shall make the 
decision for himself, thoughtfully and carefully in 
full \dew of the alternatives before him. He will 
have no one decide lightly or blindly to follow him. 
He constantly demands a deliberate decision, puts 



40 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

men to the test, and insists that they face the issues 
squarely. " Sell that thou hast and give to the poor" 
(Matt. 19:21). "If any man will come after me, 
let him deny himself, and take up his cross and fol- 
low me " (Matt. 16: 24, Mark 8: 34). "Think not 
that I am come to send peace on earth" (Matt. 
10:34). "Let the dead bury their dead" (Matt. 
8: 22). "If any man come to me, and hate not his 
father, and mother, and wife, and children, and 
brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he 
cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14: 26). Everywhere 
we find the appeal directed to the fully conscious 
dehberate will. Jesus' very call to repentance is 
a challenge to freedom — to a fresh and conscious 
affirmation of ideals. He stirs up the depths of 
the soul. He arouses the latent spiritual energies. 
All his teaching presupposes a fundamental and 
controlling unity of life in the individual, a single 
originative and governing principle of action which 
is the very root of the soul. This principle is the 
heart of man. "A good man out of the good treas- 
ure of his heart bringeth forth that which is good; 
and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart 
bringeth forth that which is evil; for of the abun- 
dance of the heart his mouth speaketh " (Luke 

6:45)- 

This appeal of Jesus to a man's inward sense of 
freedom does not imply that action may be performed 
without a sufficient motive or without reference to 
character. On the contrary it is the state of the heart 



THE HEART OF MAN 49 

or inward disposition that determines the action. 
For *' Where your treasure is, there will your heart 
be also" (Matt. 6: 21, Luke 12 : 34). The strongest 
motive is the reaction of the heart or inward self to 
the incitements afforded by one's situation in life. 
Hence his constant insistence on the development 
of the right inward disposition — the cultivation of 
right thoughts and feelings. The entire Sermon 
on the Mount is a declaration of the fundamental 
and central importance for life and conduct of a 
right disposition. When a modern psychologist 
says that all ideas are motor, i.e. tend to issue in action 
and that to think is a moral action, he is giving gen- 
eralized expression to what Jesus teaches in regard 
to the relation between the inward attitude of feeling 
and thought and the outward act. ''Not that which 
goeth into the mouth defileth a man ; but that which 
cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man" (Matt. 
15: 11). "Forout of the heart proceed evil thoughts," 
etc. (Matt. 15: 19). "For a good man out of the 
good treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things ; 
and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart 
bringeth forth that which is evil" (Luke 6: 45). 

The final determining cause of action then is, 
according to Jesus, the inward disposition or heart. 
Here he is at one with a sound psychology. But this 
inward disposition or heart of man is not a fixed and 
finished product. A man's disposition, as this has 
been developed by previous deeds, will determine 
the motive which shall make strongest appeal to him 



50 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

now. But this disposition in turn is the resultant 
of the self-determining activity of a living and de- 
veloping unity of selfhood or personality. The 
true ethical or spiritual development of man is a 
movement from centre to periphery. Man is not 
free from instant to instant to act in opposition to 
his prevaihng habits of thought and action. But 
the habitual channels of mental movement are the 
resultants of his own self-determining thoughts and 
choices. A man's past lives on in his present life 
just because it is his own past. 

Freedom of choice, then, moves not only within 
the limits set by a man's heredity and circumstances, 
but, as well, within the limits set by his own self- 
initiated deeds in the past, which have moulded the 
plastic materials of his nature into a certain set of 
heart. Jesus recognizes fully these limits to alter- 
natives in human action. "For this people's heart 
is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, 
and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time 
they should see with their eyes, and hear with their 
ears, and should understand with their heart, and 
should be converted, and I should heal them" 
(Matt. 13:15)- 

Indeed, this determination of present action and 
feeling by past feeling and action is the condition of 
stability in goodness of character as well in evil 
habits. Without this fixation of mental tendency 
all the toil of right thinking and the effort of right 
action would have no lasting result and the moral 



THE HEART OF MAN 5 1 

world would be a chaos. One could no more count 
on the effective goodness of the good man than on 
the destructive badness of the bad. Nevertheless, 
in spite of the power of evil habits and the lasting 
effects of sin, Jesus finds that the worst quality of 
all in human life is a spiritual insensibility and 
inertia produced by a mere routine pursuit of good- 
ness according to form and prescription. Hence 
his constant condemnation of the respectable Phari- 
sees and his preference for the humble and contrite 
pubhcan and sinner. Why this reversal of accepted 
values on his part ? Because he finds the true destiny 
of man in the constant upward striving toward 
a superhuman goal beyond the conventions and 
prescriptions of estabhshed society. He assumes in 
man the power, in spite of sin and evil habit, to break 
away from his past. He appeals to the inextinguish- 
able possibility of a further ethical development. He 
grounds his call to repentance and a new life on the 
infinite spiritual opportunity and destiny which 
resides in the deeps of every man's nature. His 
preference of the contrite sinner over the self- 
righteous Pharisee lies in the former's openness to 
spiritual influences. In the publican's sense of 
weakness and failure there dwells a responsiveness 
to Jesus' call to the pursuit of perfection. The 
very sense of sin and un worthiness is the first awaken- 
ing of the inward vision to the infinite \'istas of 
spiritual life. 

Tied and bound though he be by the chains of 



52 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 



N:i 



is past sins, in the humble-minded publican, 
measuring himself as nothing beside Divine Perfec- 
tion, there is stirring the inward core of spiritual 
life. He is open to the appeal of hohness. He is 
stirred by the motive of love v^hich gives him a new 
outlook and a new reverence for himself as he may 
be. He sees himself as the centre of new possibiHties. 
Actual, concrete freedom then, as Jesus conceives 
it, is the power of hearkening to the call for spiritual 
progress, is the responsiveness to the demands of 
love and holiness, is the possibihty of ever making 
a fresh start in the ethical or spiritual life. Free- 
dom for him is not the abstract possibility of an 
alternative in every single case of action. It is the 
persistent possibility of a man's choosing his true 
destiny, of ever trying anew to be himself in the best 
sense. A man must react somehow to every in- 
fluence, and concrete freedom means that a man 
may react in the long run to the better influences, 
that he may ultimately bring his true and spiritual 
self to expression in his character and deeds. 

The heart of man for Jesus, then, is the central 
or controlling life-principle; freedom is the rule of 
this central principle both over the impulses which 
spring from the flesh and the merely legal morality 
of an existing respectability of convention. 

Wherever the inward nature continues to grow 
in power and control of the mere brute facts of in- 
dividual impulse and of social convention, there is 
freedom. There is a developing unity of the in- 



THE HEART OF MAN 53 

ward self which is at the same time an enlargement 
of the spiritual beyond the merely given or natural 
selfhood. And the truth of Jesus' conception of 
the heart or central spiritual principle and of its 
freedom is witnessed by the common consciousness 
of civilized man. This truth is reflected in the in- 
expugnable conviction of the normal man that he 
ca7i act for himself and that he ought to direct his 
own life in one channel rather than another. And 
the feeling of a unity in our inward lives, the fluc- 
tuating but ever growing sense, in the normal man, 
of the wholeness and integrity of the self, is the re- 
flection in consciousness of this central principle. 
The feeling of unity in the human self is a conscious 
process which reaches its floodtide in our most sig- 
nificant actions. And the very deepest significance 
of our deeds is that they express and realize this 
inward unity of life. 

There are two postulates on which the entire 
ethical or spiritual Hfe of man rests and which 
underUe all the toil and thought by which man has 
moved upward in the course of civilization from 
the brute. Unless these postulates have a basis 
in reality, it is difficult to see what meaning the strug- 
gle of man toward a higher culture can have, and it 
is even more difficult to see what rational meaning 
or worth there can be in the individual life. These 
postulates are: i. That man has the power of de- 
termining his own action and thought toward spir- 
itual ends. 2. That the rational, free, and ethical 



54 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

life of the individual is in contact or positive relation 
with a supreme spiritual life. The conscious reali- 
zation and functioning of the spiritual possibihties 
indweUing in the heart of man is the grov^th in in- 
v^ard unity and povi^er. And this growth cannot 
take place except by contact with a larger spiritual 
hfe which suppHes the proper stimulus and atmos- 
phere for the individual life. "I am come that they 
might have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly" (John io:io). "For a man's life 
consisteth not in the abundance of the things which 
he possesseth" (Luke 12 : 15). 

Freedom, then, is the having a conscious rational 
life. But this life in the individual depends on the 
touch of a cosmic hfe, and the very heart of man is 
the indestructible potentiahty of the inward and 
personal spirit to grow in contact with a larger life. 
As men have gained control over nature and become 
masters of the external conditions of existence, they 
have ever turned their inquiry with passionate long- 
ing toward the nature, meaning, and destiny of 
the inward and conscious life. Never was this per- 
haps so true as in the present age, with its psycho- 
logical drift in literature, art, science ; with its poig- 
nant and sometimes even morbid introspectiveness, 
its acute self-consciousness of individuality. We 
are making rapid progress in psychological analysis 
of the individual and society and in the psycho- 
logical interpretation of the past. But if this analysis 
shall live and bear fruit, it must be accompanied by 



I 



THE HEART OF MAN 55 

a living synthesis in experience and action. We must 
see life whole, and we can only do this if we have 
a comprehensive insight into its purpose and faith 
in its destiny. 

Insight into the integral meaning and goal of life 
and direction how to reach that goal are precisely what 
Jesus offers. After these preHminary considerations 
of the general presuppositions of the ethical life, we 
are now ready more fully to consider his interpreta- 
tion of life. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 

Freedom and scope for the development and 
expression of the individual life is the unfailing 
index of a high civilization. Without room and 
opportunity for the free play of the individual, no 
society can be rich in great personalities. And all 
great achievements in art, literature, science, and 
practical life originate in creative personalities. 
In the ancient v^orld the greatest number of creative 
personalities in art and science were produced 
amongst the Greeks. And, amongst the Greeks, 
it was Athens, with its democracy and its free 
movement of life, that gave to the world its great- 
est intellectual and aesthetic heritage. 

In religion it was the theocratic commonwealth of 
Israel, with its acceptance of a God who had made 
a free covenant with the nation, based on principles 
of social justice, its well-ordered system for the ad- 
ministration of justice, and its provisions for the re- 
demption of the debtor and the alien, that gave to 
the world the largest number of great ethical and 
religious personalities and leaders. In short, the 
Hebrew religion, established by Moses and deepened 
56 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 57 

by the prophets, was, in contrast to the nature- wor- 
ship of surrounding peoples and of the original He- 
brew tribes themselves, an ethical religion; since it 
was based on the moral choice, by the people, of a 
God whose supreme characteristic was that he had 
laid the foundations, and would maintain the prin- 
ciples, of righteous dealing between man and man. 
The moral struggle, the call to make a choice as to 
whom they mil serve, that we find so frequently 
in the pages of the Old Testament, is the expression 
of the birth, through conflict with mere nature- 
worship, with its cruelties, oppression, and sensuahty, 
of an ethical consciousness which defines the obliga- 
tions of justice and mercy between man and man. 
It is true that the relation of Jehovah was conceived 
to be primarily toward the nation, but it is equally 
true that the moral basis of this relation brought a 
recognition of the rights and worth of the individual. 
In the rendering of allegiance to Jehovah as against 
Baal, Moloch, and Ashtaroth, mere unethical, nature- 
deities, and in the fulfilment of the moral obHgations 
involved in this allegiance, the individual conscience 
necessarily came into play.^ 

Our recognition of the moral worth of the indi- 
vidual Hfe is a joint heritage from Greece and Israel. 

^ In the prophet Ezekiel, the individual quality of right conduct 
becomes fully explicit. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die: the 
son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, neither shall the 
father bear the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the 
righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked 
shall be upon him" (Ezekiel 18: 20). 



58 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

And from the beginning of modem times up to the 
twentieth century, European civihzation has steadily 
progressed toward a fuller recognition of freedom 
and scope for the individual, toward a deeper sense 
of the meaning of the personal life, and toward a 
better provision for the nurture and culture of the 
personal spirit. The movement of western civiliza- 
tion has been on the whole in the direction of a deeper 
self-consciousness and a fuller personal freedom. 

This movement received a new impetus on the 
religious and ethical side from the Protestant 
reformers. When a time-honoured institution {i.e. 
the Mediaeval Church) was tried at the bar of the per- 
sonal conscience and found wanting, the worth and 
freedom of the individual in religion came to explicit 
expression. The same movement, on its intellectual 
side, began with the rebirth of classical learning, the 
rediscovery of nature, and the growth of an indepen- 
dent science untrammelled by the authority of Aris- 
totle and of the Mediaeval Schoolmen. The doubt 
of Descartes, who finds a sure and fixed point of 
departure for science only in his immediate personal 
consciousness as a reasoning being, burst the trammels 
of dogma, and the modem intellect steps forth free 
in its own prescriptive right to question and inquire 
from the facts of nature and the laws of reason. 
Henceforth, the way to universal truth lies only 
through the activity and cooperation of thought 
in the minds of individuals. The universality and 
objectivity of truth can only be established through 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 59 

its witness in the common reason of the brother- 
hood of science. Henceforth the way to genuine 
virtue and the highest good Hes through the originat- 
ing activity and the consenting practical reason of 
the individual man. A universal moral quahty and 
a common good can now be attained only through 
their witness in the common consciousness of the 
brotherhood of a rational humanity; not through 
obedience to the prescriptions of any absolute exter- 
nal authority. 

Authority becomes now subsidiary and derivative. 
It must constantly be tested and revised by the expert 
individual, by the virtuoso in science and in conduct. 
Historical institutions can no longer claim the blind 
unquestioning allegiance of the individual will. 
They must commend themselves by their vitality 
and inherent reasonableness, by their power of and 
readiness for readjustment to the demands of spir- 
itual progress in the individual. 

And, since moral and ethical quahty is now seen 
to be, as Buddha, Socrates, and Christ had already 
taught, an attitude of the inward disposition, a 
function of the heart or spirit of man, every inherited 
custom and historic institution, however hoary, must 
be tested at the bar of the ethical or practical reason 
in the soul of the individual. We learn that, if the 
worth and dignity of the will and reason of the in- 
dividual person are violated, so far there is no real 
worth or dignity in the world. All genuine moral 
quahty is an attribute of individual persons. Social 



6o JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

institutions and traditions have ethical significance 
only in so far as they are taken up into and minister 
to the inner life of the spiritual individual. All true 
ethical action must originate from within. All truly 
worthful movement must be from the centre of life to 
the periphery. All real spiritual hfe will irradiate 
from the heart of the individual outward into that 
nexus of social relations which binds individuals 
together. The growth in freedom and opportunity 
for the indi\ddual, which is the characteristic mark of 
modern times, is due to the recognition of the supreme 
worth of inwardness in Hfe. It is the discovery that 
in the inward or spiritual consciousness and attitude 
on the part of the individual person there is alone to 
be found genuine ethical reality. But the free move- 
ment of this inward life requires that the individual 
shall not be trammelled and repressed by a mass of 
externally imposed laws, institutions, and authorities, 
by cut-and-dried formulas and systems. ''The 
wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the 
sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, 
and whither it goeth : so is every one that is bom of 
the Spirit" (John 3:8). 

Nothing shows more emphatically the vital mo- 
dernity of a poet, such as Browning, than his insistent 
emphasis on the supreme significance of the hidden 
movements in each individual life, his constant 
questioning of the ethical worth of conventionally 
right actions performed at the expense of some 
genuinely inward individual impulse, and his no less 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 6l 

constant assertion of the worth of unseen hidden 
motives and of actions that are perhaps from the 
point of view of the outer world insignificant, as the 
final criterion of a fife's meaning. 

I quote three passages at random illustrating these 
aspects of Browning's doctrine of the supremacy of 
inward and individual values. 

" I'm queen myself at bals-parej 
I've married a rich old lord, 
And you're dubbed knight and an R. A. 

Each life's unfulfilled, you see ; 
It hangs still, patchy and scrappy. 
We have not sighed deep, laughed free, 
Starved, feasted, despaired, — been happy 

And nobody calls you a dunce. 

And people suppose me clever : 

This could have happened but once. 

And we missed it, lost it forever." — Youth and Art 

" Stake your counter as boldly every whit. 
Venture as warily, use the same skill, 
Do your best, whether winning or losing it. 

If you choose to play ! — is my principle. 
Let a man contend to the uttermost 
For his life's set prize, be it what it will I 

The counter our lovers staked was lost 

As surely as if it were lawful coin : 

And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost 

Is the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin. 
Though the end in view was a vice, I say. 



62 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

You of the virtue (we issue join) 
How strive you? De te fabula! " 

— The Statue and the Bust. 

" Not on the vulgar mass 
Called ' work,' must sentence pass, 
Things done, that took the eye and had the price; 
O'er which, from level stand, 
The low world laid its hand 
Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice. 

But all, the world's coarse thumb 
And finger failed to plumb. 
So passed in making up the main account: 
All instincts immature. 
All purposes unsure. 

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's 
amount," etc. — Rahhi Ben Ezra. 

Compare 

" All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, 
have done good work, although they may die before they 
have the time to sign it." — R. L. Stevenson, ^s Triplex. 

In these words we find striking expression of the 
inward or spiritual character of all ethical values and 
of the supreme dignity and significance of the in- 
dividual's life. We find clear utterance of the 
principle that the ethical or spiritual quality which 
alone gives worth to life must be felt and lived by a 
man jor himself, i.e. consciously and deliberately. 

And this sense of the supreme ethical worth of 
the individual is the inspiring and redeeming principle 
of the world-wide movement of democracy to-day. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 63 

This is the higher source and sanction of social 
reforms, of the present social unrest, and of all 
movements toward the socialization of the means 
and instruments of the common life. All the mighty 
streams of tendency that to-day are moving toward 
social betterment, whether blindly or well-directed, 
have their basic ethical principle in the demand that 
the individual man shall have full opportunity to 
develop his own life, to make the best of his own 
possibilities in action and feeling. These agitations 
and half-defined longings are symptoms of the quest 
for an inward unity and harmony of spiritual ex- 
perience and of the insistent demand that the outer 
conditions of existence shall not hinder this quest. 
We must not overlook, however, the confusion and 
the dangers incident to these movements of reform 
and progress. The indi\iduars own nature and the 
permanent conditions of his true life remain un- 
defined. Of what sort is the individual in whom re- 
sides supreme worth and dignity? What are his 
characteristics, and in the satisfaction of what desires 
does he come to his own true life? Not the satis- 
faction of every random impulse and not the grati- 
fication of every passing whim shall be the condition 
of the best life for the individual. And yet, the 
natural individuality of man seems to consist simply 
of a specific combination of blind congenital impulses, 
instincts, and desires. Each separate self comes to 
conscious being with his own peculiar mixture and 
intensity of biological impulses and interests. For 



64 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

many men the goods of the palate possess stronger 
interest than poetry or art, for some even stronger 
interest than truth. By what criterion shall one 
determine the respective worth of these individual 
differences in practical taste? 

And, again, there seems to be no real stability of 
life, no central and abiding unity in the natural 
individual, i.e. in the individual considered as a 
bundle of inborn impulses and appetites. He is 
blown about by every wind of impulse, and he is 
always the prey of the stronger individual or the tool 
of social custom and convention. If the good of the 
individual consisted simply in the unlimited satis- 
faction of his natural appetites, the attempt to 
reform society vdth a view to realizing this good 
would be foredoomed to failure. Since the natural 
appetites are themselves insatiable and know 
neither reason nor limit, we should have, with the 
removal of restraint and the weakening of social con- 
ventions, simply anarchy and chaos : "the war of all 
against all." 

Furthermore, without the possession of a universal 
and abiding spiritual principle, the individual has no 
resource or resistive power against the encroach- 
ments and the tyranny of the mere machinery of 
social life. Without this spiritual centre he is 
condemned, so long as the existing social machinery 
maintains itself in a democratic society, to be the 
creature of the commonplace and the superficial, of 
mental inertia and conventional mediocrity. The 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 65 

endeavour to realize better social conditions of life 
for the individual must defeat itself unless the 
individual be able to find a higher principle of action 
than mere social conformity or present utility. In 
the absence of this spiritual source of life, in default 
of any universal ethical and controlling power in his 
inner being, the soul of the individual must be 
crushed in the machinery of work and his life dried 
up in the routine of conformity, his spontaneity 
destroyed by the tyranny of the commonplace and 
the vulgar. We see these influences at work even 
now in the creation of a dead level of uniformity in 
dress, manners, bearing, opinions, etc., to which the 
individual is dragged down and made to conform. 
We see it at work in the endeavour to make the 
counting of heads, irrespective of what they contain, 
the test of wisdom, truth, and righteousness. The 
authority of the majority still claims to be the sole 
final authority in conduct and opinion. The test of 
goodness and truth becomes utihty as this is 
measured by the desires and interests of the average 
man. 

And, on the other hand, the reaction of the in- 
dividual against this tyranny of the commonplace, 
vulgar, and crassly utilitarian standards of the 
average contemporary social environment is in 
danger of being the expression of mere caprice. 
Genuine spiritual individuality is confounded with 
mere eccentricity of will, vidth egoistic self-assertion 
and love of power. 



66 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

The most artistic and influential expression of the 
individualistic revolt against the stupid and vulgar 
mediocrity of many tendencies in contemporary 
social life to-day is that of Nietzsche.^ His "Over- 
man" is the new and free individual who will be the 
absolute master of his own fate and so a law unto 
himself. He will subjugate his own sensuous 
desires, in order that he may completely control 
himself and so win control over the common herd. 
The great man of the future, instead of serving the 
multitude, will be served by them, and society will 
exist only that out of its dead level may arise the 
occasional superior individual who realizes the "will 
for power " (Wille zur Macht). He is the ruthless 
master of the crowd, despising the average man, 
rejecting the Christian precepts of sympathy and 
pity, because by these the weak and useless are 
preserved, and spurning every hitherto recognized 
principle of action which interferes with the as- 
sertion of his " will for power." He contemns 
time-honoured standards of action and runs tilt 
against the good as well as the evil in our conven- 
tional morality. Christian morals are regarded 
as a conspiracy of the many weak and cowardly to 
keep in subjection the few strong and brave souls. 
Nietzsche's " Overman " is the extreme drastic 
poetic representation of a blind, capricious revolt 
against the tyranny of the commonplace which rules 

^ See especially his So Spake Zarathustra and Beyond the Good 
and Bad. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 67 

in contemporary civilization. Here we have at 
least a vigorous assertion of the inner worth of the 
individual, but without any clear consciousness of 
the universal spiritual ground or source of such 
worth and, therefore, devoid of any positive in- 
terpretation or guidance for the individual life. 
Nietzsche's doctrine of the "Overman" ends in 
protest, irony, and capricious paradox. It fails in 
definiteness and coherence for want of a positive 
and universal ethical principle. It is an artistically 
expressed revolt without programme for the future 
or a definite picture of the Overman. It ends in 
negation. Nevertheless, his work, especially in 
So Spake Zarathustra, Beyond the Good and Bad, 
and Genealogy of Morals, has the great merit 
of calHng attention to the serious dangers which 
threaten the inwardness and spontaneity of the 
indi\idual life at the hands of the commonplace 
vulgar conventions of the mere brute majority, 
which threatens to rule in industrial democracy to- 
day, and to the absolute failure of mass and numbers 
without serious intelligence or noble ideals to sup- 
ply any genuine inspiration or specific guidance or 
originating principle for spiritual life. In truth, 
democracy is at a very serious pass, since it threatens 
to become a mere struggle for sensuous and super- 
ficial goods. Thoroughness in thought and fidehty 
in deed are in danger of departing with thoroughness 
in work, through the haste to get something for noth- 
ing. It cannot be too frequently or emphatically 



68 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

insisted upon that the problem of democracy is 
primarily a problem of conduct and character. 

Many noble spirits to-day have turned from the 
platitudes of conventional morality and traditional 
religion to seek expression for spiritual Hfe and 
satisfy their craving for an inward and spontaneous 
individual Hfe in devotion to the formative arts. 
Art becomes for such men a source of ethical uplift. 
The individual finds in the devoted contemplation 
of beauty, or in the endeavour after its adequate 
expression in fresh forms, the means for the free 
utterance of his inward life and for the pursuit of 
harmony and unity in experience. In the presence 
of beauty, whether as lover or as artist, he finds 
himself dehvered from the gross utilities of the 
market-place and from the banal platitudes of the 
multitude. He gets away from the dead level of 
things as they are and from the stifling atmosphere 
of a mere external routine of thought and conduct 
into a freer air, where things are not judged by their 
base uses as means to money getting and sensuous 
enjoyments, or men by their capacity to move like 
docile sheep in a flock driven by the staves of the 
majority vote, inspired by the commercial gospel of 
the greatest returns for the least expenditure, and 
guided by the moral conventions of a smug and 
Pharisaic Philistinism, for which external ''success " 
in business and profession and social popularity 
are the highest standards of Hving. 

And yet, art does not afford by itself alone a uni- 



THE CONDUCT OF TPIE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 69 

versal and abiding principle by which the individual 
life is delivered from sensuous caprice, practical 
materiahsm, and egoistic pleasure-seeking into a 
spiritual realm of experience. To exercise this 
liberating function, art must become the vehicle of 
truth in life; i.e. it must conform to fundamental, 
moral, and spiritual principles. Instead of pandering 
to the senses and to human vanity and ostentation, it 
must subdue its sensuous materials in stone and 
colour and sound into the embodiments of ideals. 
It must create forms that are true to the highest and 
most universal principles of living. And these 
principles are ethical. Art is the expression and 
ministrant of life, not its creator. Great art has 
always been the outcome of exalted emotions and 
exalted ideas. The Gothic cathedrals of Europe 
embody the reUgious aspirations and emotions of the 
Middle Ages. The painting of the early Renais- 
sance expresses the union of Christianity and human- 
ism in the new learning. The noblest music of the 
nineteenth century is the utterance of the aspirations 
of the human spirit quickened by the enlarged sense 
of the infinitude of nature and of the manifold and 
complex relations of the human soul to nature 
brought about by the discoveries of science. And 
great poetry, from Homer and Dante and Shakespeare 
to Goethe and Browning, has always been informed 
and moulded by the creative spirit of a people or an 
age assimilated and unified in the living genius of an 
individual. 



70 jESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Art, then, as well as what we commonly call 
conduct, requires for its development the guidance of 
ideas or principles of lije. Without truth or fidelity 
to fundamental principles of experience and conduct, 
art becomes capricious and illusory, and the pleasure 
it yields becomes hollow and transient. Art can add 
a lasting grace to life and give genuine refreshment 
to the spirit of man only if it embody, in harmony 
with the truth of things, some phase of Hfe and ex- 
perience which has a permanent worth independent 
of the mere caprice or sensuous enjoyment of the 
moment. In other words, the function of art in life 
is to stir up noble emotion, and noble emotion 
depends for its purity and permanence on a contact 
of the individual soul with the ultimate principles 
of conduct and of being. 

The freedom and worth of the inward life in the 
individual, then, can be realized only if his self- 
initiated actions and his private experiences have an 
objective and universal basis in an over-individual 
spiritual life. Freedom from convention may mean 
riot and license. Inwardness of life may be distorted 
into mere egoistic pleasure-seeking or anarchical 
caprice. True spiritual freedom must repose on 
obedience to a supreme spiritual principle. Ethical 
inwardness of life must be won in the service of 
and in communion with a universal ethical life. If 
human personality is to possess real worth, this must 
be won in the service of absolute values. 

And Jesus offers this universal basis for the in- 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 7 1 

dividual life. His appeal is throughout to the in- 
ward spirit as the governing principle of the in- 
dividual. "Ye have heard that it v^as said by them 
of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But 
I say unto you, that v^hoso looketh on a woman to 
lust after her hath committed adultery with her 
already in his heart" (Matt. 5:27-28). "The 
light of the body is the eye: If therefore thine eye 
be single, thy whole body shall be full of light " 
(Matt. 6: 22). "Blessed are the pure in heart: for 
they shall see God " (Matt. 5:8). In every case it 
is the inward principle of action that makes or im- 
makes the man. 

Furthermore, Jesus treats reverently every in- 
dividual soul. He sees the essential goodness in 
Zacchaeus the despised publican. He commends 
the woman's deed of devotion in Bethany, under- 
standing her motive. He condemns the Pharisee 
for laying heavy burdens on men's souls. He 
counsels the disciples not to be overanxious for the 
future, since they are of more value to God than 
many sparrows. And, in those words in which he 
lays down the eternal principle of ethical and reh- 
gious freedom, he commands the disciples to give 
their souls and wills into the keeping of no external 
authority. "But be not ye called Rabbi; for one 
is your Master, even Christ ; and all are ye brethren. 
And call no man your father upon the earth : for one 
is your Father which is in heaven " (Matt. 23 : 8, 9). 
He asserts the supremacy of human needs over con- 



72 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

vention and institution. ''The Son of Man is Lord 
also of the Sabbath" (Mark 2:28, etc.). 

But Jesus grounds this freedom and infinite worth 
of the indi^idual soul on its true basis in the universal 
and eternal. The disciples have one Father and one 
Master. They are to serve one another even as he 
has served them, ''But he that is greatest among you 
shall be your servant" (Matt. 23:11). And the 
supreme and in\dolable principle of the ethical Hfe 
is an all-encompassing, all-forgiving love. "But I 
say unto you, love your enemies," etc. (Matt. 5 : 44). 
This command arises from the con\dction of an in- 
ahenable worth in every human soul. Hate does 
violence to this worth, and therefore injures not 
only him against whom it is directed, but him 
from whom it proceeds. 

Furthermore the unstinted care and beneficence 
of the disciple is not to be directed simply to external 
things. We are to care for the very souls or spirits 
of our fellows. " But whoso shall offend one of these 
Httle ones which beheve in me, it were better for 
him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, 
and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea" 
(Matt. 18 : 6, Mark 9 : 42). 

These are fimdamental principles of the social life 
which we will consider in the following chapter. 
But the objective ethical principle or end for the 
individual is not a merely placid social hfe. Con- 
duct is not exhausted in making others happy, in 
feeding and clothing men, and promoting social 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 73 

harmony. Jesus, who counsels forgiveness of ene- 
mies, says: *' Think not that I am come to send 
peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a 
sword" (Matt. 10:34, and also Luke 12:51). 
He could denounce the Pharisees in no meek or 
hesitating words. He never counselled or sought a 
social peace and harmony won by the sacrifice of 
the higher insights of the individual. He never 
would have a living soul enslaved by convention, 
past or present, or sanction any custom that violated 
the worth of the individual hfe. 

Jesus points beyond the actual social hfe, as well 
as beyond the merely natural or worldly life of the 
individual, to a supreme spiritual end. Human 
conduct is to be directed toward attaining this end. 
Human life is to be transformed into a higher spir- 
itual life. The goal of ethical action is a new 
spiritual manhood. *'Ye must be bom again" 
(John 3:7). "That which is born of the Spirit is 
spirit" (John 3 : 6). "That ye may be the children 
of your Father which is in heaven" (Matt. 5:45). 
"Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which 
is in heaven is perfect " (Matt. 5 : 48). There is, 
Jesus teaches, a supreme and eternal hfe of which the 
germ exists in man. And man's destiny is no less 
than to bring to fruition this spiritual Hfe within 
himself. This spiritual life is that of the Kingdom 
of Heaven or Kingdom of God. This kingdom has 
been founded and men can enter it at any time, and 
are indeed constantly entering it now in this earthly 



74 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

life. Jesus' idea of God as the source and sustainer 
of this spiritual life we shall consider later. But 
we can now outHne the characteristic marks of this 
life in the human individual. 

(i) A man begins to possess and grows into the 
true life only in so far as he meets the tasks and 
duties, the problems and opportunities, of everyday 
existence in the spirit of open-minded desire ever to 
do, to know, and to be, the better. The distinctively 
human life, the unceasing growth of heart and mind, 
which is man's prerogative and true destiny,^ is pos- 
sible only in so far as a man keeps his mind open and 
sensitive to all truth, his will humble and eager to em- 
brace all good, his entire spirit free from narrow pride 
and smug self-satisfaction. When Jesus says, "Verily 
I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become 
as Httle children, ye shall not enter into the king- 
dom of heaven" (Matt. 18:3; compare also Mark 
10: 15, Luke 18: 17, Luke 9:48, etc.), and "Suffer 
little children to come unto me, and forbid them not : 
for of such is the kingdom of God " (Luke 18 : 16), 
he does not mean that, in order to enter into this new 
realm of ever-growing and yet eternal life, one must 
have the innocence of a child in matters of conduct 
and morality, its ignorance in matters of common 
knowledge or science. No ! the most charming and 

^ Compare, Browning — 

" Finds progress man's distinctive mark alone. 
Not God's and not the beasts' ; God is, they are. 
Man partly is and wholly hopes to be." 

— A Death in the Desert. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 75 

beautiful thing about a child's mind is its eager and 
zestful openness to new influences and fresh ideas, 
its open-mindedness and honesty of purpose, its 
teachableness unhampered by any thought of 
personal profit, by fear of painful consequences, 
or dread of established conventions and opinions. 
The childhke spirit is that of genuineness. The 
entrance upon and the pursuit of the true life re- 
quires an open-minded, humble, reverent, and eager 
desire for fuller truth and higher righteousness. 
This childlike spirit of candour and love for truth be- 
longs to the true saint, the scholar, the artist, the good 
citizen. In any and every relation and duty of life 
the man who lays his whole heart and intellect open 
to the leading of that which is truer, better, more 
beautiful, more worthy than that to which he or the 
social conventions of his time and place may have 
yet attained, is moving along the road to perfection. 
He has already entered into the life eternal of which 
Jesus speaks. 

(2) It follows that a man's actions are really good 
only in so far as they are determined from within 
by motives which he has weighed, approved, and 
affirmed by his own conscious will. This great 
principle of the inward and personal origin of all 
truly human or voluntary action is insisted upon 
again and again by Jesus. "For out of the heart 
proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, forni- 
cations, thefts, false witness, blasphemies " (Matt. 
15:19; compare also, Mark 7:21, Luke 6:45, 



76 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OP TO-DAY 

Matt. 12:34, 35, etc.). Speaking to the Pharisees, 
he says: "Now do ye Pharisees make clean the 
outside of the cup and the platter ; but your inward 
part is full of ravening and wickedness " (Luke 
11:39); "for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, 
which indeed appear beautiful outward, but within 
are full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness," 
etc. (Matt. 23:27, etc.). 

When Kant, the greatest moral philosopher of 
modem times, said, "There is nothing in the world, 
or even out of it, that can be called good without 
quahfication, except a good will, "^ he simply 
expressed in a formula this principle of the personal 
inwardness of all right human action which Jesus 
taught and illustrated by word and deed as no other 
ethical teacher among men has done. 

(3) One must not act for praise or reward, but 
simply for the sake of the end and the joy of the 
working, the joy of communion and fellowship 
vrith the master- workman. This principle applies, 
whether the work be the active rendering of help to 
one's neighbours, the speaking of truth, prayer to 
God, or what not. "My Father worketh hitherto 
and I work" (John 5:17). In his model prayer, 
Jesus tells his disciples to ask in trust for their daily 
needs only, and, beyond this, to express their desire 
that God's kingdom of righteousness and love may 
come, their entire submission to and cooperation 
with the Supreme and Righteous will. "Thy king- 

^ Kant, Metaphysic of Morals, Section I. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 77 

dom come, thy will be done" (Matt. 6:io, Luke 
11:2). Jesus does not say that service of the high- 
est is without its reward. He teaches most emphati- 
cally that the universe is so ordered that the good 
will triumph and the evil be annihilated. He 
finds throughout the universe a law of compensation 
or retribution. He teaches that the spirits of men 
who have laboured faithfully, humbly, and gladly 
shall enter into the great reward.^ But he insists 
that men's motives shall be pure and disinterested, 
that they shall labour without stint or envy, joy- 
ously and ungrudgingly, for the progress of righteous- 
ness, peace, and happiness among men. 

In the great parable of the Labourers in the 
Vineyard,^ under the guise of a like reward for all 
who have laboured, whether for a short or a long 
period, he calls attention, on the one hand, to the 
compUcation of circumstances and of personal 
conditions which prevent some men from awaken- 
ing to a sense of their true destiny until the pos- 
sibility of entering upon the right life is almost gone, 
while others have the great privilege of labouring 
in the realm of righteousness and peace from the 
very outset of life, having wasted no energies and 
lost no time in the pursuit of mere material goods 
and pleasures or in the indulgence of the evil pas- 
sions of greed and hate ; and, on the other hand, he 
teaches that the rewards of those who labour for the 

^ Compare Matt. 5 : 12, io:4iff. ; Mark 10: 29, 30; Luke6:23flf.; 
and many passages in John. ^Matt. 20: 1-16. 



78 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

highest, in the spirit of fidelity and love, are im- 
measurable. The principles of contract labour in 
the market-place of this world have no application 
to the motives and rewards of the spiritual life; i.e. 
to the life of service and of growth in the kingdom 
of the good. 

For here the rewards are infinite and immeasur- 
able. They can be appraised in terms of no earthly 
or monetary standard, since the reward is simply 
the imfolding of the motive of all true labour and 
service; viz. the joy of the working, the joy of 
grov^ng in life by labour for truth and justice, for 
love and peace. The infinite reward is the expan- 
sion of this joy of honest and devoted work into a 
consciousness of communion and fellowship with the 
Highest. This principle has been well-expressed 
by KipUng: — 

" And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work 
for fame, 
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his 

separate star, 
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things 
as They Are." — The Seven Seas, U Envoi. 

This is the spirit of true scholar, artist, and poet, 
no less than of what is technically called the devotee. 
Each in his several vocation is true labourer and 
hence true saint. And there is no worldly and con- 
ventional standard or instrument by which true 
service may be accurately measured or imfaiUngly 
detected. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 79 

* There are flashes struck from midnight, there are fire- 
flames noon days kindle, 

Whereby piled-up honours perish, whereby swollen am- 
bitions dwindle; 

While just this or that poor impulse, which for once had 
play unstifled 

Seems the sole work of a Hfetime that away the rest have 
trifled." — Browning, Cristina. 

The publican and harlot enter the kingdom 
before the respectable and highly connected Phari- 
see. Irreproachable reputation and high social 
standing may accompany spiritual death. 

(4) An indi\ddual in whom this spiritual principle 
is dominant will not allow the inward integrity, 
freedom, and peace of his personality to be de- 
stroyed by any fear of external fortune or by social 
disapproval of those who Hve and judge by purely 
traditional and customary standards. He will not 
spend his energies in headlong pursuit of gain or 
pleasure or of the approval and commendation of 
society's arbiters. 

He will keep his poise at the centre of the inner life, 
which is preeminently a feeling for the real and 
true, inciting to activity a strong will. He will 
preserve at all hazards the spiritual freedom and 
integrity of thought which belongs to him as a 
rational personality. He will know, and live by 
the knowledge, that it shall profit a man nothing 
if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul. 
He will not fear them which have power to kill the 
body. He will not fear them that have power to 



8o JESUS CHRIST AND CIV^ILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

exclude a man from some established organization or 
institution, whether this be a so-called select social 
"set," a club, a church, or a trades imion. He will 
not fear them that have power to rob a man of his just 
deserts in business or labour or even of his popularity 
or office. But he will fear them that have power 
to destroy the soul,^ — the spirits that flourish on 
and hve by sycophancy and lying and cheating, by 
base compromise and ignoble flattery; by an in- 
vertebrate conformity to that in business and pohtics, 
in social life and church, which has no excuse for 
existence except that it does exist and exerts its 
baleful and deadening influence to retard the 
progress of social justice, of mental independence, 
and of personal virtue. He will fear, above all, 
those spirits and tendencies, ever present in ci\ihza- 
tion, which have power to throw a man's hfe into the 
hell of a \iolated self-respect, a vanished love for 
truth, an indi\idual freedom lost through coward- 
ice, a soul deadened by mere conformity for the sake 
of ease and comfort, position, popularity, and wealth. 
(5) A man who follows the principles of Jesus 
Christ will strive to make the best use of his o-^ti 
powers, both because of their inherent worth as 
attributes of a personal spirit, and because of their 
value in furthering the wehare of other men. He 

^ The disciples were warned to fear the spirit of compromise, 
of dishonest and disloyal regard for their own comfort, in the 
critical days when the ^Master faced the implacable hate of Jewish 
ecclesiastics. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 8l 

will develop his owti personal capacities to the ut- 
most and ever use them in the service of justice, 
truth, and love. The necessity of constant alertness — 
of acti\dty, of the fullest use of one's capacities and 
opportunities, is insisted upon again and again by 
Jesus, but more especially in the parables of the 
Unjust Steward ^ and of the Talents.^ The man to 
whom one talent is given is deprived thereof because 
he has made no use of it. 

(6) The man who accepts Jesus' principles of 
life will not judge other men's achievements or 
failures by the standards of his own hfe. He will be 
humbly sensible of the infinite complexity of human 
life, of the tangled threads of destiny in which man 
is enmeshed; threads interwoven of the com- 
plexity of external conditions in relation to the ever- 
varying strength and duration of the fundamental 
impulses of human nature from man to man. ** Judge 
not, that ye be not judged" (Matt. 7:1). ''Why 
beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's 
eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine 
own eye?" (Matt. 7:3). "For unto whomsoever 
much is given, of him shall much be required" 
(Luke 12:48). "Many shall come from the east 
and the west, and shall sit do\ATi with Abraham, 
and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven" 
(Matt. 8:11; compare Luke 13 : 25-30). 

Such a man will strive not to forget in his attitude 
toward his fellows the Divine Love that forgives 

^Luke 16: 1-8. 2 Matt. 25: 15-30; Luke 19: 12-26. 



82 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

and embraces in its beneficence even the most 
errant and sinful son of man. He will endeavour to 
reproduce in his own heart that love that maketh its 
sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth 
rain on the just and on the unjust (Matt. 5 : 45). 

(7) There vdll be and grow in such a man an in- 
tegrity or wholeness of moral hfe, since he will 
ever seek and serve the real, and will ever be the 
enemy of pretence and sham. No firm and lasting 
integrity and harmony of li^dng is possible except in 
the service of those ideal values of conscious living 
which in abstract terms are called truth in thought, 
reality in deed, justice in the mutual relations of men, 
jellowship or love and friendship in the common 
relationships; and which, in the concrete forms in 
which they may be embodied and experienced by 
the individual, constitute the real worth of living, 
the actual wealth and harmony of personal being. 

(8) Ever looking for and striving to promote in 
others the same rational, free, and spiritual human- 
ity that he seeks to develop in himself, such a man 
will affirm in every ethical deed the supreme authority 
and ultimate reality of this ideal humanity, which 
constantly grows in the world through the individual's 
choice of truth, of justice, of forgiveness, of practical 
love, of independence of soul and integrity of mind. 

Without faith in the possibihty of a new humanity, 
consisting in a living fellowship of free and rational 
persons united, not by external constraint, but by the 
bond of mutual reverence and regard, and each direct- 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 83 

ing his actions without desire for worldly profit or 
applause, in order that by his deeds the higher man- 
hood may find expression in his own life and in the 
fives of others, fife is but a miserable thing, the 
ephemeral illumination by consciousness and thought 
of a lump of clay warmed by the instincts of an 
animal, which in turn are fanned into a consuming 
flame of desire, by the very power of thought. 
Thought which is employed only to enhance and to 
serve brute desire, thus degraded from its proper 
function breeds either despair and rage at the 
failure of life to satisfy itself or a hollow satiety. 

Jesus teaches emphatically that this new humanity 
can come to birth in a man only if he has the faith to 
afiirm it. Spiritual fife begins in unstable equilib- 
rium. The spirit of man hovers, in its critical 
moments, on the razor-edge of being which divides 
the realm of moral decay, of spiritual death and lost 
individuafity, from the realm of moral progress and 
fife eternal. The latter is the realm of those who 
manfully hold and reaffirm a great faith in the value 
of the spirit, and so find personality in the service 
of a spiritual humanity which is by their acts trans- 
formed from vision into reafity, from ideal into fact. 
Very often the fine which divides dishonest compro- 
mise from honesty in deed or utterance or thought, or 
self-indulgence from self-sacrifice, seems so Vv^avering 
and faint that only in the privacy of a soul sternly afive 
to spiritual issues can this line be discerned and kept. 

In the very act of affirming by deed his faith in 



84 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

the new humanity, man recreates in himself, with 
new power and greater actuaUty, that new human- 
ity. He is reborn into a realm which is not seen or 
handled by the outer senses, which cannot be 
weighed or measured, and which, hence, never is 
in a physical sense ; but which becomes, for one who 
affirms and so experiences it, an ever living and grow- 
ing actuality, at once the d3niamic source and goal of 
conscious being. 

Hence the severe tests that Jesus m.akes in order 
that men's wills may be awakened to the affirmation 
of this spiritual realm which they cannot apprehend 
or enter without such affirmation. When he finds 
that interest in family, wealth, or occupation 
obscures the recognition of the supreme importance 
of personal choice of the higher life, he lays down 
conditions that bring to a head the spiritual crisis 
in his hearers through which alone there can be 
born in them the full consciousness of their own 
spiritual individuaUty, of the sacredness and su- 
preme worth of the soul. "Let the dead bury their 
dead" (Matt. 8:22). "Go and sell that thou hast, 
. . . and come and follow me" (Matt. 19:21, 
Mark 10: 21). We must not extract laws or rules 
for every hfe from these utterances. They are 
directed toward specific cases. It is the principle 
and not a literal appHcation of an occasional utter- 
ance that shines through them.^ The same principle 

^ Remember that these words were addressed to his immediate 
disciples at the great turning-point in their Master's life. There 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 85 

is taught in the parable of the Wedding Supper. 
The bidden guests are unready because they are 
absorbed in various side-issues. It is another 
aspect of the same principle that Jesus demands 
faith. His insistence upon faith as a prerequi- 
site to being healed or otherwise helped, as 
well as to hearing aright and understanding his 
message, flows from the full consciousness, on his 
part, that, in the critical moments of moral and 
spiritual development, the direction that a man's 
life shall take and, indeed, his very power of further 
appreciation and understanding of spiritual princi- 
ples, depend on the outgoing affirmation of will by 
which there is kindled in him the feeling of the 
supreme value of these intangible spiritual princi- 
ples which he embraces; and of their transcendent 
authority in contrast with the brute facts of the 
physical world and with the inert conventions of 

can be no compromise between him and the rulers of the Jewish 
church. He must suffer many things and be put to death. 
They, the disciples, must now make the great choice. Shall they 
elect persecution, distress of mind, suffering, perhaps death, in 
loyalty to the truth enshrined in the Master's person and life, or 
shall they think of wives and families, of friends and comfort, and 
be cowardly recreant to the light that has shone into their souls? 
To every mature man, perhaps, comes sooner or later the ne- 
cessity of the great choice. Shall the business man be honest 
and lose money or dishonest and make money ? Shall the artisan 
do badly a piece of important work that cannot be seen ? Shall 
statesman, scholar, or preacher face unpopularity or personal loss 
of position, power, or reward to stand by a principle ? The hour 
surely strikes when we must forsake all and follow Him or lose 
our spiritual integrity. 



S>6 JESUS CHIIIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

worldly society with its traffickings, its rivalries and 
hatreds. 

In the matter of ethical development in the 
individual there is, first, the nascent will to affirm 
that which is seen, dimly it may be, to be higher; 
then the deed ; and, lastly, the clear insight or full 
experience of that moral harmony which bursts into 
flower only through the medium of antecedent 
choice and deed. In the moral Hfe knowledge 
requires direct personal experience and experience 
requires the experimental proof of willing. By the 
nature of the case the unseen realm of spiritual val- 
ues of ideal personal and social life can be known 
only by him who wills these values. "If any man 
will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine " 
(John 7:17). This saying penetrates to the heart 
of the matter. 

The new birth is the coming to personal and vital 
experience of the conviction of the inherent worth and 
the supreme reaUty and authority of a rational, free, 
seK-goveming humanity, which is present in germ 
and seeking actualization in every individual son of 
man; and which has its roots in a Divine and 
Transcendent Life. Hence this new experience of 
the possibihties of manhood which is a new birth, 
i.e. the birth into consciousness of one's conviction 
of a supremely worthful destiny as member of a 
transcendent order of life, while it involves a personal 
deed, likewise involves the feeling of a spiritual gift 
or grace which comes from beyond the individual's 



THE CONDUCT OF THE INDIVIDUAL LIFE 87 

life. In the critical deed of faith in the new human- 
ity the individual's life is enlarged by the \ ision and 
contact of a Universal Life. His o\vti deed brings 
the infinite reward of fellowship with a life that 
lifts his narrow and transient being into the atmos- 
phere of the eternal. 

In the world of western civilization to-day, 
freedom of action for the individual is generally 
recognized to be the indispensable condition for the 
development of personality. The modern man has 
gained the insight that a genuine morality is above all 
else a quality of the inner personal life, and that, 
where \iolcnce is done to the integrity of the in- 
dividual will, there can be no real ethical Hfe. But, 
on the other hand, is it not true that freedom of 
action without the willing service of universal princi- 
ples of justice and truth degenerates into mere 
sensuous hcense and egoistic caprice? Can there 
be any deep inwardness, any abiding personal life, 
where thought and action are not directed beyond 
the mere externals of culture, — beyond the acquisi- 
tion of power and wealth, of social renown and means 
of enjoyment, and where the soul is absorbed in the 
mere machinery of hfe? What real and lasting 
worth is there in the individual life which seeks to stay 
itself on external acquisitions or outward recognition, 
and which tries to satisfy itself merely with doing 
things that win popular approval, or that impress 
others with their bigness and ghtter, or that kill time 
with pleasures that leave the spirit hungry, discon- 



85 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

tented, and restless, mthout inward poise or unity of 
aim? Surely there is need to-day of integrity and 
unity in life and action, need of an abiding and direct- 
ing central principle of action, need of the support and 
guidance of the imperfect and growing ethical and 
personal Hfe by faith in and contact with a supreme 
spiritual Hfe which the indi\idual may make his 
ovm if he will. This central and abiding, imifying 
and sustaining, life-principle, Jesus offers in his 
teaching concerning the Kingdom of Heaven. En- 
trance into this kingdom is an inward attitude, an 
ethical experience, a point of view and of departure 
to be appropriated by personal deed. The message 
of Jesus to the individual is twofold, — a revelation 
of the possibihty of inward unity, stability, inde- 
pendence, and peace in the midst of distracting 
and contradictory calls from the mere outer show of 
things in society and nature, in state and church, 
and a summons to the individual to make these 
spiritual realities his own by the personal deeds of 
a free spirit, able to T^dn that higher life amidst the 
confusion and conflicts of the existing order of human 
society. 



CHAPTER V 

THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 

In the forefront of the problems of contemporary 
civilization stand those problems that are grouped 
together under the name of social questions. Such 
are, — the ever more insistent questions of the right 
relations of labour and capital, of the rights and 
wrongs of labor organizations, of the right of great 
producing and distributing combinations to control 
the price of commodities of common use and need, 
of the state's relation to labour union and trust, of the 
unemployed, of the herding of masses into insanitary 
and crowded dwellings, of the minimum hours of 
labour and the living wage, etc. ; in short, the prob- 
lems of the right distribution of opportunity and 
means of maintenance, of welfare and enjoyment 
for the average man. Now, modern science has 
taught us that the nature of the environment, both 
physical and social or psychical, is a tremendously 
important factor not only in its bearing on the health 
and welfare of the adult, but, still more, on the 
development of the new generation. Hence the 
question of pro\dding healthier, cleaner, and morally 
better environments for the development of the citi- 
zens becomes one of surpassing importance to demo- 

89 



90 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION Or TO-DAY 

cratic society. The democratic state is forced, in the 
interest of its o\^ti welfare, to take account of these 
problems. 

The science of biology has cast a striking hght on 
the evolution of human society, by its emphasis on the 
brute struggle for existence, which goes on amongst 
all li\ing beings and preeminently in a modern 
society of the industrial type. And biology and 
psychology have united to teach us the paramount 
importance of the environment in determining the 
efficiency of the indi\dduars powers and weapons in 
this struggle and in determining to what extent the 
indi\iduars demand for welfare and happiness shall 
be honoured by the actual conditions of existence. 

Then, too, these demands of the indi\ddual for Hfe 
and well-being have themselves increased with the 
general growth of enhghtenment. It has become a 
truism that the increase in the number and intensity 
of wants or desires is a mark of civilization. The 
savage has few wants. The child of twentieth- 
century civilization is marked at once by a greater 
sensitiveness to environment, a keener capacity to 
enjoy and suffer, and a multiplication of psychical 
needs or desires — i.e. of needs that are such be- 
cause they have been awakened through education 
and social contact and are keenly felt. Further- 
more, the daily dissemination of information enables 
the poor labourer to learn what his rich fellow- 
citizens are doing and enjoying, how they are sat- 
isfying their needs, etc. And so his desires and 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 91 

demands tend to multiply themselves and to breed 
unrest and discontent. His standard of living, of 
comfort, of recreation rises rapidly toward the 
plane of luxury. Out of all these complex factors 
of our civilization grows apace and with tremendous 
urgency the social problem — the problem of a new 
social order which shall bring a higher measure of 
justice, welfare, and peace to all. 

Now the social problem concerns us here only in 
its ethical aspects. And we may recognize at once 
that mere increase of desires and of demands, such 
as we have just noted, has no necessary ethical 
quahty and that there may be no question of funda- 
mental justice involved in many of these demands 
in so far as they are demands for superfluities and 
injurious luxuries. In so far as civiHzation tends to 
the rapid multiplication of wants and desires, with- 
out the corresponding means for their satisfaction, 
civilization is unethical in tendency and is building 
on a basis both imreasonable and dangerously in- 
secure. But, on the other hand, there must be a 
minimum of recreation and leisure as well as of bodily 
food, proper housing, and mental training which are 
essential to the welfare of the normal or average 
person. And the possession of these minima seems 
to be an ethical right which it is the preeminent obli- 
gation of society to make possible. This question 
leads us directly into the heart of the moral aspect 
of social problems. 

Amongst the conditions of modem industrial life 



92 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

that are directly unethical, i.e. that militate imme- 
diately against the mental and moral welfare of the 
individual, those conditions which interfere with the 
home and family life occupy a primary position. 
The herding together of all ages and both sexes in 
crowded tenements, the necessity of the mother's 
leaving her children in order to work for their 
bread, child labour, must all retard the growth 
of affections and acti\dty in the proper channels as 
well as produce physical deterioration. The con- 
ditions of work amongst girls in shops and factories 
often wear them out physically or drive them toward 
temptations that always stand in their way. 

Another factor in industrial Hfe which makes 
against the highest welfare of the indi\idual is the 
divorce between the worker and his work, — the 
absence of any bond of interest or dehght between 
the worker and the routine labour of his vocation, 
and also of any bond of sympathy or common under- 
standing and interest between employer and employed. 
The "cash nexus" becomes the chief social principle. 
This situation exists not only in manual labour, 
whether skilled or unskilled, but even where the work 
is preeminently what we call brainwork. The ma- 
chinery of modern Hfe is so vast and complicated 
that the individual worker is in danger of becoming 
a mere cog in a system ; the human bond is ignored 
and men are treated as but parts or tools of the 
industrial system. Now, physical machinery and 
complex business organization are both inevitable 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 93 

conditions of our industrial and commercial activity. 
And the only remedies for the above evil conditions 
are, on the one hand, the development of a mutual 
human interest and sympathy so far as possible; 
and, on the other hand, especially in the more exact- 
ing forms of occupation, a compensation for deaden- 
ing routine in a moderate leisure and the opportunity 
for refined enjoyments. 

In so far as the growth and activity of man, in 
mind as v^ell as in body, is dependent on an environ- 
ment v^hich at least must not crush out, poison, 
or unduly repress his mental powers and higher 
feelings, thus far does the opportunity which the 
industrial situation gives an adult man or a growing 
child to have nourishing food, healthy surroundings, 
good air, and some means of recreation, constitute 
the ethical aspect of industrial activity. Further- 
more, man is by nature social. The healthy and 
harmonious development and functioning of the 
human personality is impossible without communion 
with other selves. In so far as by the industrial 
conditions of his life a man is cut off from family 
Hfe, from social companionship and recreation of 
an honest, temperate, and refining character, and, 
in the years when he is plastic to external influences, 
is not in any way brought in contact with upHfting 
and enlightening personalities, thus far the condi- 
tions of his life are unethical. 

The above passages have been written to indicate 
briefly the ethical bearings of social problems, and 



94 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

these may be summed up in a few words. A rightly 
organized human society is the normally indispen- 
sable condition for the realization of the highest 
individual life, and in the pre"\dous chapter we saw 
that all inherent worth centres finally in that which 
alone on earth has infinite worth, — the individual 
personality. This is the essential teaching of Jesus 
on the social question. 

Hence the organization of society and its various 
institutions are not ends-in-themselves. They are 
means to the realization of the higher personal life 
in individuals. The principles which should de- 
termine our valuation of any existing social institu- 
tions and guide our efforts toward reform are these : 
I. Every man has an essential dignity and worth 
which may indeed be hidden and potential but is 
none the less real. 2. The higher or ethical and 
spiritual life of man is social. Personality requires 
for its growth and healthy functioning communion 
with others, mutual intercourse, and service. The 
social institutions — family, community, church, 
and nation — are instruments or means of personal 
development and acti\dty, and thence, so far, have 
an ethical character. The meaning and value of 
society is expressed in its individual members. The 
spiritual indi\ddual is at once, as potential spirit, 
the point of departure for social activity and reform 
and, as actual spirit, the point of return, the living 
centre or core of social life. The final touchstone 
of a ci\dlization's value is the men it produces. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 95 

And these, I take it, are the principles of Jesus' 
social teaching. He lays down no political or eco- 
nomic programme. He does not even formulate 
a constitution for his ovm society. He institutes a 
free and plastic fellowship. He does not sketch 
out an ecclesiastical polity. The time was not pro- 
pitious for these things. Jesus does not give the 
details for an ideal society such as Plato's State 
or More's Utopia. He recognized that the constitu- 
tion and organization of societies, poHtical, ethical, 
and ecclesiastical, must vary from time to time, must 
depend on changing circumstances, and that the 
organization of industry must be subject to constant 
mutations. ''Heaven and earth shall pass away" 
(Matt. 24: 35, Mark 13: 31, Luke 21: ^^). There- 
fore he refuses to entangle himself and his teaching 
in the judicial and pohtical affairs of his own time. 
"Who made me a judge or a divider over you?" 
(Luke 12: 14.) "Render therefore unto Caesar 
the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the 
things which are God's" (Matt. 22: 21, etc.). The 
only social institution concerning which he gave any 
definite prescription was marriage, and it is not clear 
that he meant his utterances on this point to have the 
force of legislation. He seems rather to have simply 
announced and illustrated an ideal, which involved the 
recognition of the intrinsic worth of womanhood, and 
obedience to which would make marriage the union of 
two moral equals and an instrument for the growth of 
ethical personality. Compare Matt. 19; 4-11, 



96 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Now, if we consider the situation in which Jesus 
found himself, it will become clear why he refrained 
from all specific legislation and institutional organiza- 
tion, while laying the greatest stress on the social 
aspects of life and the spiritual significance of com- 
mon ideals and institutions. Judsea was a pro\dnce 
of Rome with autonomy in matters ecclesiastical. 
But the intensely theocratic nationalism of the stricter 
members of the Judaic church — the scribes and 
Pharisees — and the feeding of this religious national- 
ism on the traditions of the past, on the glories of 
the Davidic kingdom, and on the prophetic ideals 
of a new kingdom of righteousness and peace, with 
its centre in Jerusalem, with its intensely and thor- 
oughly Jewish character, and with its Messianic 
head of Da\ddic lineage — all these things gave the 
Messianic ideals and hopes and longings of the lead- 
ers of Judaism in the time of Jesus an intensely and 
even fanatically political character. Rehgion, morals, 
and state were in their ideal inextricably bound up 
together, and all had a deeply Judaistic tinge. The 
Messianic kingdom was conceived in terms of a 
fanatical nationalism. Therefore, it became neces- 
sary for Jesus sharply to define and separate the 
social order or spiritual fellowship, which he sought 
to inaugurate, from this worldly ecclesiastical- 
political ideal of the representatives of orthodox 
Judaism. Hence his kingdom has little in common 
with the expected Messianic kingdom of scribes 
and Pharisees but the name. It was not long after 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 97 

his own day that the advent of a supposed Messiah ^ 
produced a political revolt and led to conflict with 
the Roman authorities with great bloodshed. The 
poHtical Messianic ideal went out in flame and blood. 
Jesus, therefore, was exceedingly careful not to jeop- 
ardize his own work and not to have his kingdom 
warped from its spiritual and ethical basis, confused 
with an ecclesiastical-political order, and thereby 
entangled with the poHtics of the Roman Empire. 

He seems to have hoped, during the earlier period 
of his public career, that his ethical and spiritual 
conception of the kingdom would be taken up into 
and would leaven and transform the Jewish church. 
When he speaks of the immediate presence of the 
kingdom, of its leavening character, of its rapid 
growth, when he compares it to the grain of mustard 
seed which grows into a great tree, etc., he no doubt 
has in mind the expectation of his own nation and 
church, transformed by this new influence. And 
he looks forward to the time when the fanatical, 
worldly, and unspiritual conceptions of the kingdom 
as a political institution established by miraculous 
forces and of the Messianic King as a victorious war- 
lord shall be eliminated from it entirely. 

The best evidence that he held this hope and pur- 
pose of transforming and elevating the current idea 
of the kingdom is revealed in the bitter and grow- 

^ Simon bar Kocheba, who conquered Jerusalem and -about fifty- 
towns, who had an army of 200,000 men, and was only put down 
by the Romans after a severe struggle in a.d. 135. 
H 



98 JESUS "CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

ing disappointment expressed in his own sayings: 
*'A prophet is not without honour, save in his own 
country" (Matt. 13 157, etc.). "O Jerusalem, 
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest 
them which are sent unto thee, how oft would I 
have gathered thy children together, even as a hen 
gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye 
would not " (Matt. 23 : 37). " Many shall come from 
the east and west," etc. (Matt. 8:11). "He hath 
blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that 
they should not see with their eyes, nor understand 
with their heart, and be converted, and I should 
heal them" (John 12:40; compare Matt. 13: 15). 
The parable of the wedding feast applies here, too. 
His own people are bidden but are not ready, and 
so outsiders are admitted. 

But, inevitable and sad though his complete 
break with the Judaism of scribes and Pharisees was, 
Jesus lays claim to the title of Messiah, as being the 
true ethical and spiritual representative of the ideal 
kingdom. He refutes the necessity of a Davidic 
or heriditary title. "If David then call him Lord, 
how is he his son ?" (Matt. 22 : 45, Luke 20 : 44). In 
one of the last acts of his earthly career, the entry 
into Jerusalem — meek and lowly and riding on 
an ass as the symbol of the spiritual character of his 
leadership — Jesus yet allows himself to be hailed 
as Messiah.^ 

^ I cannot here enter at length into the discussion of the ques- 
tion whether Jesus claimed to be the long-expected Messiah of the 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 99 

The Kingdom of Heaven, which was the general 
framework of his teaching, with the historical out- 
growth therefrom of the vast developing and con- 
tinuing organization called the Christian Church, 
are sufficient evidence that Jesus conceived and 
planned that his teaching should find organized 
embodiment in social institutions. The existence 

Jews in any sense. It is clear, from the whole drift of his utter- 
ances and from his attitude toward the rulers and leaders in 
the Jewish church, that he utterly rejected the conception of a 
worldly and political Messiah who should expel the Romans and 
set up a triumphant kingdom as the Vice-gerent of God in Jeru- 
salem. But it seems to me equally clear that, without throwing out 
so many passages from the synoptic gospels that, on similar prin- 
ciples of sifting, there will be little if anything left, one cannot 
avoid the conclusion that Jesus regarded himself as called and 
sent to transform and elevate the prevailing conception of his 
people as to the coming of the reign of righteousness upon earth, 
to purge it of its narrow national and legal features, and, by trans- 
forming it into a wholly ethical and universal notion, to make the 
Jewish framework the instrument of the new world-order. Jesus 
regarded his own immediate mission as primarily directed to his 
own people — to the nation whose language, tradition, and reli- 
gious heritage he shared. He valued to the full the unique privi- 
leges of membership in the nation that had given birth to and 
handed down the teachings of Moses and the prophets. In the 
earlier period of his ministry he cherished the hope that his 
countrymen might accept his teaching and especially his concep- 
tion of the new order or rule of divine righteousness. He con- 
cealed any thought he may have then had of himself as the true 
Messiah. But, after the bitter disappointment of his two rejec- 
tions in Nazareth and the unbending opposition of scribes and 
Pharisees, together with the (probable) defection of many half- 
hearted followers, Jesus, withdrawing to northern Galilee in 
loneliness of spirit, finally determines to test the insight of his 
own immediate followers. At Ccesarea Philippi he puts the 



loo JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OP TO-DAY 

of the church, even in its most woful aberrations, 
is continued testimony to the social effects of Jesus' 
teaching. And the ideal or normative character of 
that teaching has been shown again and again in 
its power to renovate and reform the earthly insti- 
tution called after his name. It is not a part of my 
purpose to discuss at length the relation between 

question, "Whom say ye that I am?" Simon Peter answers, 
"Thou art the Christ," and Jesus, accepting the designation, 
charges them not to reveal it (Matt. 16:13-20, Mark 8:27-36, 
Luke 9:18-21). Henceforward he prepares them for the inevi- 
table crisis, when the hate of the Jewish rvilers shall work its will. 
He warns them and tries to steel them to meet opposition, 
persecution, and personal danger. He constantly reminds them 
of what they must sacrifice, and, at the same time, assures them 
of the ultimate triumph of the new order and of the reward of 
eternal life thereon. There is no despair, not a moment's waver- 
ing on his part ; but there now enters into his preaching a severer 
and sterner note. The final act in his revolutionary transforma- 
tion of the accepted Messianic Ideal is his mode of entry into 
Jerusalem, coupled with his assumption of authority in the temple 
and his claims to a special insight into the nature of God. 
(Whether or not Jesus actually used the term " son of God " with 
reference to himself in a unique sense, it is certain that his whole 
teaching is pervaded by a quiet but unshakable confidence in his 
own perfect knowledge of the Father.) Thus the final crisis of 
his death was brought on. The whole development is so psycho- 
logically probable, the dramatic elements in the history are so 
harmonious, and the synoptic gospels agree so fully on all essen- 
tial points that I cannot see good grounds for any other conclusion 
than that Jesus did regard himself as the true Messiah of his 
people, the one foretold by the prophets, and sent to enlarge and 
uplift the Messianic conception untU under his hands it should 
serve for "the healing of the nations." That so radical a trans- 
formation of the ciirrent notion was, in effect, its abolition does not 
in the least affect this conclusion. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE lOI 

the Kingdom of Heaven as already founded ("in 
the midst of you") and as developing slowly by 
analogy with the growth of natural life, and the King- 
dom of Heaven in its ultimate state of consummation. 
I will only say that the two aspects seem to me to 
be complementary rather than contradictory, and 
that it was natural that, in the later days of his life, 
Jesus, when his departure was imminent and his 
message seemed in danger of extinction, should 
emphasize the final triumph of his kingdom and lay 
stress on the consummation of his work. 

In the earlier Galilean period of his ministry 
Jesus spoke chiefly the joyful and inspiring news 
of the immediate founding and rapid growth of the 
kingdom, spoke the tidings of the Father's love, 
of divine Sonship, of the joy of life eternal, etc. 
Later, as the conflict deepened and it became the 
settled conviction of the Master that he must die 
that his gospel might live and spread abroad amongst 
men, he emphasized the notion of the final consum- 
mation of the kingdom, of the triumph of the new 
order in spite of opposition and death. There is 
heard in his teaching a sterner and more strenuous 
note. Here, presumably, he made some use of the 
apocalyptic expressions current in his day. But 
it is neither possible nor necessary to determine here 
how far the words, attributed to him in the Evangelists 
on this point, are coloured by the later expectation 
of an immediate second coming or whether Jesus 
shared this expectation in the sense that it was held 



102 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

by St. Paul, and apparently by the first apostles gen- 
erally. It is sufficient to insist that the two notions 
of the kingdom, on the one hand as present and 
immanent ("in the midst of you"), as subject to a 
gradual growth (the parable of the leaven, the mustard 
seed, etc.), and, on the other hand, as future, tran- 
scendent, and perfected, are so far from being con- 
tradictory that they are necessary complements one 
of another. To accept the first wholly is to assume 
the second. A moral or spiritual process in the 
individual and the race that has no definite goal and 
that rests on no faith in an ultimate and perfect 
reaHty is surely without definite meaning.^ 

Even if one were to assume that Jesus did expect, 
as did the early apostles, a speedy second coming 
which has not been realized in the literal way in 
which it is depicted in the gospels, the imperishable 
ethical worth of that conception of a cosmic rule 
of righteousness, a Di\dne moral order, whose 
constituent elements are persons living in fellow- 
ship, is not in the least affected by that considera- 
tion. 

What directly concern us here are the principles 
of social ethics that underlie the teachings. If 
Jesus dehberately founded a social order, called in 
the terminology of his own time and country the 
Kingdom of Heaven, how did he conceive the govern- 
ing principles of that order? In beginning this 
consideration let it be noted that the ethical life, or 

^ See appendix, Ethics and Eschatology. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 103 

true life, Jesus makes absolutely identical and conter- 
minous with the Kingdom of Heaven.^ 

We may summarize Jesus' principles of social 
life as follows : — 

(i) Life in the new order is one of service. *'But 
he that is greatest among you shall be your servant" 
(Matt. 23:11; 20:26; Mark 10:43-45). "For 
whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased : and 
he that humbleth himself shall be exalted " (Luke 
14: II, Matt. 23: 12, etc.). "The Son of Man came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister" (Mark 
10:45). In short, service rendered to one's fellow- 
members in the commonwealth of humanity is the 
measure of true greatness. In this respect the judg- 
ments of history are in the long run in agreement 
with the Master. Those who enjoy a worthy im- 
mortality in the memories of men, those whose names 
and deeds are gladly and thankfully recalled from 
age to age, are mankind's true benefactors — its 
prophets and poets, its thinkers and inventors, its 
reformers and statesmen; not its great egotists, its 
rapacious plunderers and bloody conquerors. No 
doubt mankind continues to dishonour and stone 

^ The term " heaven " is no proof that the kingdom had a purely 
other-worldly character. This term refers rather to the ethical 
character of the kingdom than to its space-relations. It is the 
realm of that which is spiritually exalted, the realm of an ethical 
humanity founded on God, not a realm existing in far-off space 
or to come into being in some far-distant time. Indeed, in current 
Jewish speech, " Heaven " meant " God " and *' Kingdom " meant 
"rule," so that "Kingdom of Heaven" means in Jesus' mouth 
"the Rule of God" or "the Rule of the Father." 



104 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

the prophets when ahve, but, in the end, it does 
justice, however tardily. 

The serious and general acceptance of Jesus' 
principle of ser\dce, as the highest pri\ilege and re- 
ward of action, would do more to solve social prob- 
lems than any other conceivable plan. It would 
purify poHtics, it would abohsh commercial dishon- 
esty and oppression, it would heal the breach be- 
tween capital and labour. Let a man, whether 
political representative, judge, employer, or artisan, 
once fully recognize and accept the principle that to 
render honest and unstinting service to his fellows 
is to become a worthy person, and to enter into the 
life of enduring greatness; then there will be no 
thought on his part of personal profit at the expense 
of others, of disloyalty to his post, of adulterated 
goods, of inferior workmanship. This principle 
of true greatness is astonishingly simple to under- 
stand. It is \Tndicated by history, and our social 
progress is traceable chiefly to its influence. The 
men who have truly and permanently advanced the 
cause of human civilization have been imbued with 
the principle of service. 

(2) Service is to be rendered according to need, 
not according to desert. " Call the poor, the maimed, 
the lame, the blind" (Luke 14: 13). "Give to every 
man that asketh of thee" (Luke 6:30. Compare 
Matt. 5 : 42 ; 19 : 21, etc.). Jesus does not inculcate 
a vague philanthropy, a diluted humanitarian sym- 
pathy that evaporates in an emotional mist. He 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE I05 

insists on a specific service to be rendered to defkiite 
and needy individuals. He would not have thought 
much of an enthusiasm for the conversion of the 
heathen, ten thousand miles away, that was bhnd or 
indifferent to the needs and feelings of the dwellers 
on the next street, and heedless of the terrible suffer- 
ings and e\dls of child labour, insanitary and over- 
crowded dwellings, the wholesale adulteration of 
foods, etc. And, on the other hand, the story of 
the good Samaritan told in response to the question, 
"Who is my neighbour?" (Luke 10:29, ff.) means, 
not simply that one is to deal with private cases that 
come to one's immediate notice. It means, too, 
that wherever there is a pressing need, there is an 
obligation created. The social principle of Jesus' 
ethics involves the obhgation that one shall, in one's 
public as well as in one's private life, do one's part 
positively toward the removal of every hindrance 
in the way of the full development and fruition of 
every human person. He calls men, as responsible 
and rational persons, to labour for the upbuilduig 
in every way possible of a higher type of humanity. 
Hence, while it is a mistaken view to identify Jesus' 
teaching with any specific and local scheme of social 
reform or sociahstic programme, on the other hand, 
the acceptance of his principles involves the definite 
obUgation to consider, vdth open and earnest mind, 
any plan for social betterment that may hold out a 
promise of curing social ills, and to contribute the 
labour and the thought of one's own personaHty 



Io6 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

toward social progress. The Master knew the chang- 
ing and uncertain character of industrial and politi- 
cal institutions. He knew that states and pohcies, 
the labour and industry of this world, are due to 
complex conditions that arise and alter in the evo- 
lution of human society. "The fashion of this 
world passeth away" (i Cor. 7:31). These things 
are transitory. But the spiritual forces and acti\dties 
on which depend the welfare of state and society are 
eternal. "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but 
my words shall not pass away" (Matt. 24:35). 
"My kingdom is not of this world" (John 18:36). 
He mil not entangle the good news he brings 
and the fellowship he institutes with any local and 
transitory scheme of things. The conditions of his 
work and the circumstances of his life prevented his 
participation in the activities of citizenship or the 
concerns of worldly culture. A member of a sub- 
ject nation that was intensely and narrowly patriotic, 
and that longed for a heaven-sent dehverer, he must 
abstain from any utterance or step that would pre- 
cipitate rebelhon and armed conflict. He must take 
care, above all, that the new order which he insti- 
tuted be not confused, to perish, with Jewish local 
and temporal concerns. The kingdom of the spirit 
must be kept clear ahke of Jewish ecclesiasticism 
and Roman statecraft. As the inaugurator of a new 
spiritual cosmos or order of hfe amongst men, his 
work must be concentrated, intensive, simple, directed 
with single eye and will toward its absolute goal. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 107 

But the Master was no enemy to human culture, 
no ascetic or eremite. He loved nature and human 
kind, simple joys, human rejoicings at weddings, and 
the hospitahty of friends. He cannot concern himself 
with science, art, or industry because his aim is 
directed toward the moral foundations of human 
character, without which these activities of culture 
are worthless and even harmful. In principle, he 
calls us to labour for these goods just in so far as 
they minister to fulness, peace, and joy in the in- 
ward Hfe. There are very many things in modem 
life that were outside the scope of his work, but, if 
we get from him the true perspective, and learn to 
estimate things at their relative values, we shall find 
that his principle of service according to need 
ennobles art, humanizes industry, and gives a soul 
to science. And, with reference to these matters 
commonly called ''social problems," while this 
principle gives us no cut-and-dried scheme, it urges 
and quickens us to render the service of our minds 
and characters to the work of social betterment. 
What Jesus contributes to social betterment is the en- 
noblement of personal character, the deepening of 
personal obligation, and the resolve to make every 
institution and organization subservient to the fel- 
lowship of free men. 

The upKfting of society is the uplifting of its in- 
dividual members. The solution of social problems 
is the development of noble personalities and the 
extension of their influence. 



Io8 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

(3) The motive for rendering service is personal 
love ; i.e. respect and regard for the worth of every 
human soul. "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as 
thyself," etc. (Matt. 19:19 and 22:39, etc.). 

Personal service is not to be limited to a return of 
favours rendered or to be given in the expectation 
of favours. It must know no limits of friendship 
or enmity, of social position, creed, or nationality. 
And why? Simply because all men, as having 
originated from the same Divine Father, have in 
them a spark of that personal nature which has 
infinite worth. Jesus' teaching of personal service 
and love follows directly from his doctrine as to the 
immeasurable value of the indi\idual. If, however 
repugnant or indifferent to us a certain person may 
be, that person, too, has his individual share in 
the divinely originated spiritual nature of humanity, 
then we must treat that nature with reverence in 
him and render it willing service, otherwise we 
injure it in ourselves. 

(4) The supreme evidence and result of the in- 
dwelling power of this motive of love is unstinted 
forgiveness, a good-will that conquers and banishes 
all anger and hate, and that is not confined and guided 
in its beneficence by the measurement of personal 
desert. Forgive "until seventy times seven" (Matt. 
18:22). "Love your enemies, bless them that 
curse you, do good to them, that hate you, and pray 
for them which despitefully use you, and persecute 
you; that ye may be the children of your Father 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE lOQ 

which is in heaven" (Matt. 5:44, 45). The high 
destiny of man is nothing less than to seek a per- 
fection which shall be the same in kind as the 
perfection of the Father-God, in whose image man 
is made. 

Jesus regards God as indeed supreme in power, 
wisdom, and knowledge, but for him God's central 
and all-controlling attribute is Love, infinite and 
unwearying, that expresses itself toward man in 
beneficence unstinted and bestowed beyond all 
desert. "For he maketh his sun to rise on the evil 
and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and 
on the unjust" (Matt. 5 : 45). In these w^ords, 
beautiful in their simplicity and depth, Jesus brings 
as witness to the Father's love the prodigal bounty 
of his creative power in nature, ever bestowing life 
and the gifts of warming sun and fertilizing rain 
that cause Hfe to germinate and flourish anew. 
Man, in the heart of his imperfection and finitude, 
has a spark of the divine fire of love, and may, by 
kindling this into flame, become in truth a Son of 
the Immortal Love. 

Rudolf Eucken rightly says ^ that the enunciation 
of this principle and its incarnation in a life are some- 
thing absolutely new and without parallel in the 
earlier history of reHgious and ethical systems. 

(5) The true ethical and spiritual fife for the in- 
dividual is truly social. The man who cherishes 
envy, ill-will, or hatred against his fellow injures 

* Wahrheitsgchalt der Religion 



no JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

his own life as well as that of his fellow, by per- 
petuating division and discord. The one-sidedness 
and poverty of the separate individual life is removed 
in the fellowship with the common life. The goal 
of the individual life should be union with the spirit 
of humanity. Through this gateway alone does 
one ascend to God. "Blessed are the merciful" 
(Matt. 5 : 7). " Blessed are the peacemakers" (Matt. 
5:9). "First be reconciled to thy brother, and then 
come and offer thy gift" (Matt. 5:24). And the 
man, who, without active ill-will, is simply insen- 
sate to the lives of his fellows and indifferent to their 
existence and careers, is destroying his own life. 
He is shutting himself off from the atmosphere that 
his soul needs, — the atmosphere of the common 
spiritual Hfe, which pervades the age and which lives 
and develops from age to age. Such an one is 
stopping up the very fountains of life. For every 
individual Hfe is drawn from the common source, 
nurtured on the achievements of the race, fed and 
guided by the traditions of the great stream of hu- 
manity as it rolls down from the past ages of man's 
life. Every individual grows, is trained and stimu- 
lated ever anew by the incoming of the tide of the 
great hfe of humanity past, present, and to come, 
which sweeps away from his own life the stagnant 
eddies of ignorance and the impurities of an isolated 
self. The work of culture repeats itself and moves 
onward in the individual soul only as this opens to 
the experiences of humanity, and contributes its 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE III 

labour to the further fulfilment of all human possi- 
bilities. He who isolates himself and sits indifferent 
in his own dark cave is treating his own soul, not as 
an organism or living spirit, functioning and growing 
in co-relation with other like organisms, but as a 
dead thing, an exclusive centre of inertia, an in- 
divisible material monad. 

From such considerations we may begin to appre- 
ciate Jesus' feeling of his intimate relation with his 
followers, the meaning of the Last Supper, and the 
deep and touching harmony of the symbolic act of 
washing the disciples' feet, as related in the fourth 
gospel, with the fundamental character of his work 
and teaching in regard to the larger and more abid- 
ing spiritual hfe that may be entered upon only by 
the way of ministry and sacrifice. 

The death of Jesus thus becomes not only the 
inevitable consequence of his fidehty to his mission, 
not only his final witness to his ovm sincerity and 
single-mindedness, but the perfect type and symbol 
of the ethical principle enunciated in the words, ''He 
that is greatest among you shall be your servant" 
(Matt. 23:11, Luke 22:26). "For even the Son 
of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
minister, and to give his life a ransom for many " 
(Mark 10:45). 

The principle of life through death, of the growth 
of the spirit through sacrifice, which is expressed or 
impHed in so many of Jesus' sayings, — e.g. "Except 
a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abid- 



112 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

eth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit" 
(John 12 : 24), — receives its final and perfect illustra- 
tion in the Master's own death. He lays down his 
life in fidehty to that life's work, to the gospel of 
the new order, and to the little band of men that 
have entered upon this order. More than this, he 
dies that men everywhere may the more clearly see 
and be drawn to that for which he had lived. Fully 
conscious of his unique power and knowledge, of 
a unique relation to the Father- God, Jesus volun- 
tarily completes his work of ministration and for- 
ever embodies the gospel of service through the 
suffering and humihation of a death on a cross with 
common malefactors. In this death he triumphs over 
opposition and hatred, and, in the Easter experience, 
the disciples receive triumphant assurance that the 
Master has indeed died to live. By his death the line 
is clearly drawn between his gospel and all pruden- 
tial and utilitarian systems of worldly ethics as well 
as between his teachings and the attitude of scribe 
and Pharisee. Jesus' death is profoundly inter- 
preted in the words of the Fourth Gospel, "I am the 
vine, ye are the branches" (John 15 : 5). 

The necessity of his sacrifice is the consequence of 
the fact that he regards himself as the head of the 
human race, the leader or redeemer of humanity 
into the new order. This sacrifice embodies his 
sohdarity with the race. It is the Son of Man 
that must suffer many things. At this point ethics 
passes into religion. Moral action is completed 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE II3 

and transcended in faith. The individual life be- 
comes one with the perfect and universal Hie. The 
struggles and shortcomings of the individual will 
are overcome by union with the Christ-life. Dis- 
cords are abolished from the heart, and the limits and 
weaknesses of isolated individuality are overcome 
in the peace that passeth understanding. This 
peace involves fellowship with man and God. 

We reach the Hmits of our undertaking at this 
point where ethics passes into faith and mysticism. 
The final step in Jesus' social teaching, the goal of 
spiritual self-fulfilment through sacrifice, is mystical 
union with the universal and Eternal Life through 
the absolute service of the higher life in humanity. 
Mysticism, bom of the desire for perfect union of 
the individual life with an absolute and universal 
life, meets us in some form in all higher rehgions 
and in most great philosophies. We find it in Plato 
and Plotinus; in Brahmanism and Buddhism; in 
St. Paul, Origen, St. Augustine, and Meister Eck- 
art; in Spinoza, Fichte, Hegel, and Schopenhauer. 
What distinguishes the mysticism, in which Jesus' 
teaching issues, from all purely speculative types 
of mysticism, is that the way to the completion of 
life by union with the Universal Life, as Jesus 
presents it, is the practical, ethical way of loving 
service and willing sacrifice for the sake of other 
persons. It is not by a speculative stripping away 
of all definite attributes, not by withdrawal from 
the common duties of life, not by intellectual vision 



114 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

or meditation or ecstatic swoon that one wins one's 
way to God. The way to God, a way that all alike, 
learned or unlearned, may travel, is the dedication 
of one's personal powers to the service of human 
personality in the common affairs of life. Man 
mounts to God through the particular and local 
and personal, through the dedication of individual 
will that breaks down the confines of self and opens 
the flood-gates of humanity. The way of Jesus 
Christ to God is a way that leads not by speculative 
and monastic retirement away from humanity, but 
through the personal and social life to God. 

Hence the activities of civilization and the entire 
work of culture in industry, art, science, and social 
intercourse, in so far as these minister to the fulfil- 
ment of personalities in freedom, power, and har- 
mony of life are at once expressions of the eternal 
order of life in humanity and the unceasing enrich- 
ment of that life. The universal hfe, the life of God 
in man, is at once expressed and more fully realized 
in the historical development of culture and in the 
improvement of the social order. The spiritual 
ground of individual existence is a life at once eter- 
nal and historical, at once universal and personal. 
The source and goal of the historical and social life 
of human personality is a Divine Life, never with- 
drawn from the struggle and the pathos of man's 
history. Man enters into this life not by the loss of 
individuality, but by its perfection through service 
in the social and historical order of human culture. 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE II5 

(6) There is an ethical law of compensation in 
the ordering and government of the universe, v^hereby 
those who have suffered here from poverty and dis- 
ease, while the rich have enjoyed comfort and ease 
in absolute indifference to their fellows' suffering, 
shall be rewarded ; while the callous indifference of 
the others shall be punished. See the parable of 
Lazarus and the rich man (Luke i6 : 25 ff.). The 
significance of this story seems to be often over- 
looked. Through its pictorial framework there 
gleams the doctrine of a moral order of the universe. 
The cosmic structure of things is not only rational 
but righteous. Love indeed rules supreme, but the 
peace of its fellowship is reared on the foundations 
of justice to the individual soul. 

Jesus' teaching and deeds, then, inculcate the most 
absolute principle of social service and personal inter- 
communion. And the fundamental principle of 
this teaching is the absolute worth of every human 
individual. This is the ultimate norm, or criterion, 
by which all social institutions are to be measured, 
and the supreme principle which must guide the 
social activity of the individual. He regards society 
as a communion of free and responsible persons. It 
does not require much space, then, to state what the 
bearing of Jesus' ethical teaching is on social reform, 
and in what relations his ethical principles stand to 
the organized institutions of industrial and political 
society. If the be-all and end-all of society consist 
in the mere perfection of organized machinery, in 



Il6 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

a cut-and-dried industrial and political system, then 
Jesus has no direct message to society. If man can 
become truly good and blessed, if the highest powers of 
humanity can be brought to fruition, by any system 
of social machinery ; in other words, if the individual 
can be made good from without, by legislation and 
institutions, and if a perfect social machinery be 
possible, i.e. external institutions that will realize 
the absolutely perfect ethical life, then the ethical 
ideals of Jesus can be dispensed with. If virtuous 
character, without which no state can prosper, is 
made solely from without and not developed from 
within, then, with increase of political wisdom, we 
may dispense with Jesus' teaching. If, on the other 
hand, the inner will, or rational spirit, of the ethically 
responsible person must always transcend, in its 
absolute worth, its infinite moral capacity, and its 
autonomous responsibiHty, any system of social or 
poHtical institutions, then Jesus supplies both mo- 
tives and guiding principles for social activity and 
reform in industrial and political spheres as well as 
in family and in church. For Jesus' conception 
of the ideal humanity is that of a society of free, self- 
directing personalities, each of which possesses in 
himself and recognizes in others an individual life 
and character of infinite worth and dignity. Every 
member of this spiritual kingdom is at once an end- 
in-himself and finds his true life as a spiritual being 
in interaction and communion with his fellows. 
This spiritual society or commonwealth of persons, 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 1 17 

usually called by Jesus "the Kingdom of Heaven," 
by its nature transcends all existing human institu- 
tions and organized societies. It can never find 
complete expression under the present conditions of 
human social life. Therefore, in respect to all 
actual organized forms of human society, it remains 
an ideal, and its ultimate reality and final authority 
depend on the existence and nature of God, the ulti- 
mate source of the conditions and possibilities of 
human Hfe. 

Nevertheless, although the Kingdom of Heaven 
remains in relation to actual human social experience 
an ideal, it has shown throughout history its power 
of interpenetrating and uplifting, of spiritualizing 
and refining, the institutions and organizations which 
spring up naturally out of the needs and impulses 
of man as a social being. 

Notwithstanding its frequent aberrations, the 
Christian church has tried, from time to time, to 
realize a purer, juster, more humane type of society. 
And the state and the family have likewise shown 
the permeating and uplifting power of Jesus' ideal 
of humanity. 

Furthermore, whenever the church has wandered 
far, as it has frequently done, from the ideal of Jesus, 
it has been corrected and turned again into the right 
paths, not by influence from without, but by a return 
to Jesus' own conception, and by submitting more 
loyally and open-mindedly to the influence of his 
personaHty. The "return to the historical Jesus" 



Il8 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

is always the hopeful sign of reform and a renewed 
spiritual life. 

Jesus' conception of the kingdom as a society of 
perfected spiritual indi\iduals transcends the exist- 
ing conditions of human organization. But with- 
out this conception of a transcendent society of per- 
sons, and without the conviction that the human 
individual in his social, intellectual, and aesthetic 
activities has his roots in the order of the cosmos, 
all efforts to establish a better and more permanent 
type of society must fail. For, without this convic- 
tion of the supreme worth of man's spiritual nature, 
the activities of social reform, the endeavour after 
better conditions of Hving, after a healthier and more 
cheerful environment, and an increase of opportunity 
for the indi\adual, must all degenerate into a race 
for the mere increase of sensuous gratifications. 
Without this transcendent conception of the worth 
of life, the end or aim of life which will govern the 
multitude must be simply that of the increased satis- 
faction of sensuous desires, the multiplication and 
intensification of enjoyments, in food and raiment, 
in amusements, etc. Without a definite ideal of 
social justice, springing from a recognition of the 
inherent worth of every individual and the impas- 
sable limits of mutual respect for one another's 
persons, men will recognize no limits in their search 
for power and wealth, for enjoyment and gratifica- 
tion of the senses. For, if man neglects or denies 
the reahty of his spiritual nature and capacities, the 



THE CONDUCT OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 1 19 

lower or sensuous nature will cease to recognize any 
limits but those of power and opportunity. 

On the other hand, the notion of society as the 
instrument for the perfecting of man's life on the 
spiritual side, i.e. for the perfecting of the life of 
enduring truth and beauty as well as of righteousness 
and social harmony, springs directly out of Jesus' 
notion of human destiny. The social ideal of uni- 
versal justice, and the very conception of social in- 
stitutions as opportunities for the realization of man's 
higher nature, are directly involved in Jesus' teach- 
ing as to the inherent worth of the human individual ; 
and the social ideals of Christianity hence spring 
directly out of, and must be always evaluated in 
relation to, this notion of the transcendent aspect 
of the individual life. For the follower of Jesus no 
social institution is an end-in-itseK. For him the 
value of any form of social organization is determined 
with reference to the ultimate conception of society 
as a spiritual and free communion of persons. 

Furthermore, Jesus' teaching of mutual service 
as the highest form of discipleship, together with the 
supreme example of his ovni life and death, express 
his recognition of sacrifice or service as the great in- 
strument of human redemption, or the uplifting of 
man from his lower and egoistic self to a higher and 
more universal life. Herein we find the fullest ex- 
pression and embodiment of the principle of human 
solidarity, of the inescapable spiritual interdepen- 
dence of men. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE IMPERFECTIONS OF LIFE 

The feeling of an infinite worth and destiny in 
the human spirit has grown stronger in modem times 
with the increase and spread of knowledge and through 
the triumphs of applied science which are in them- 
selves witnesses to the power of the spirit of man. 
And, on the other hand, the new intellectual horizons 
which have been opened out by science — the ex- 
tension of our astronomical world to infinity, the 
analyses of nature into its infinitesimal elements by 
physical and chemical methods, and the widening 
of the world's history by the biological doctrine of 
evolution to a process disappearing behind us in the 
mists of an infinite past and with its goal vanishing 
ahead of us in the endlessness of the future, — this 
revelation of an infinite about us and behind us, — 
an infinite complexity within the atoms as well as 
an infinite extent in the cosmos and an infinite 
duration through which rolls the unresting process 
of things — all this dizzies the thought of man and 
makes his own narrow and brief individual existence 
seem insignificant. But, out of the contrast of the 
briefness of his earthly life and the uncertainty of 
his bodily fortunes with the infinitely complex and 



THE IMPERFECTIONS OF LIFE 121 

infinitely extended universe discovered by his own 
thought and mirrored therein, there emerges with 
greater insistence the demand for some other foun- 
dation for his spirit than that afforded by an ephem- 
eral bodily existence tied down within the narrow 
limits of this spatial and material world. 

Furthermore, while the sense of a certain infinite 
capacity of reach in the human soul has been clari- 
fied and deepened by the triumphant progress of 
the human mind in science and in its technical appli- 
cations, this growing success of mind in mastering 
the physical world has neither quenched nor satis- 
fied the deeper longings of the spirit. 

Railways and telephones, electric lights and pain- 
less surgery, do not of themselves bring perfect 
happiness to the soul. The failure of scientific and 
technical progress of themselves to uplift and satisfy 
the hearts of men is most emphatically revealed in 
the social diseases, miseries, and unrest, whose growth 
seems to keep pace with the material progress of 
civilization. The intellectual mastery and control 
of nature which, it would seem, should increase the 
general comfort and well-being and raise the general 
level of the material conditions of Hving has not 
done so at all. We have learned that it is one thing to 
produce in abundance the instruments for the susten- 
tion and well-being of the physical man and quite 
another thing to distribute them equitably. More- 
over, we have learned that the needs of man grow 
with his material progress, and those who have sought 



122 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

enduring satisfaction in the enjo}Tiient of wealth 
and the pursuit of pleasure have found their delights 
turn to hoUowness and their desires to goads that 
urge them on to feverish pursuit only to mock them 
with the hoUowness of sensuous gratifications. 
» In truth those whose lives are given up to the mere 
pursuit of physical enjoyment recognize in calm 
moments that they are not attaining enduring satis- 
faction for the soul. And those who, with higher 
aims, seek truth and goodness through the efforts 
of thought and will in science and right action, al- 
though their lives are the more noble and do attain 
enduring satisfactions, yet must recognize, just be- 
cause they earnestly pursue noble objects, that the 
goal of perfect Truth and Holiness seems far beyond 
them, and inaccessible by their own unaided efforts. 
Hence it is not merely the hampering external con- 
ditions of life, — physical, economic, and social, — 
that seem to shut out our souls from the satisfaction 
of their deepest longings. It is rather something 
in the nature of the soul itself — a something which 
gives it power to feel and seek the infinite or perfect 
in truth and goodness and beauty, but does not bring 
the power to attain these ideals under the present 
conditions of its existence. The reahzation of its 
visions by the spirit of man seems hampered on the 
one hand by this "muddy vesture of decay" which 
it must inhabit ; but, on the other hand, it seems to 
be an essential characteristic of the human spirit 
that its visions must always reach far beyond its 



THE IMPERFECTIONS OF LIFE 1 23 

attainments, that its imagination must transcend 
the actual power of thought to grasp the truth, and 
its ethical ideals forever pass the limits of its will 
and power to realize goodness. In moments of 
freshness and strength of spirit, when aspiration is 
on the wing, man hears gladly the words, '*Be ye 
perfect." But in moments of retrospection and re- 
view, when aspiration has run its course, whether 
of success or failure, and action is stilled and strength 
exhausted, man recognizes the truth of the words, 
''When ye shall have done all those things which are 
commanded you, say, We are unprofitable ser- 
vants" (Luke 17:10). 

There is a satisfaction of a good conscience, a 
satisfaction healthy and right. But this satisfaction 
exists along with and in contrast v^th a profound 
dissatisfaction with our achievements, with the sense 
of our weakness and failure in the face of the vision 
of perfection and of our aspiration thereafter. This 
aspect of the spiritual life can never be eliminated 
so long as a spark of the spirit remains in a man. 
Neither bodily comfort and pleasure nor the pursuit 
of science or art can quench this spark. Indeed 
the latter pursuits do tend to keep it alive. 

This sense of our failure to achieve, of our recre- 
ancy to ideals, our blindness to visions, of the gap 
between deed and aspiration, was fully recognized by 
Jesus as an integral aspect of the spiritual life. See 
especially the story of the Pharisee and the publican, 
the contrast between "Lord, I thank thee that I am 



124 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

not as other men are, or even as this publican," and 
**Lord, be merciful to me a sinner" (Luke i8 : 9-14). 

This sense of failure and weakness, of deadness 
of heart and blindness of sight, is the consciousness 
of sin. It is the fashion to-day in some quarters to 
regard the consciousness of sin as a pathological 
product of Hebraism and Christianity. It is pointed 
out that the Greeks were devoid of it ^ and that many 
good men do not have it to-day. Reference is made 
to the spiritual torture and even insanity which the 
sense of the inescapable burden of sin has wrought 
in many souls, and no doubt the consciousness of 
sin can take and often has taken morbid and harm- 
ful shapes. But that is no good reason for seeking 
to ehminate it. And indeed it cannot be eliminated 
from any soul conscious of the possibihties of the 
spiritual life and of its own failure to realize them. 

For the sense of sin or moral failure springs from 
the contrast between our actual deeds and states 
and the infinite Ideal of Holiness which is present 
to our vision. The Christian emphasis on the nature 
of sin is due to the presence in Christian thought 
and the actual presence in the personal hfe of the 
Christian disciple of the vision of an infinitely Holy 
God, the Alone-Good, as Jesus presents Him. It 
is because of the abiding presence in life of a God 
who is perfect Love as well as perfect Truth that the 
Christian must ever feel his unworthiness and his 
incapacity to attain the ideal, and here it is that the 
^ One surely finds it in ^schylus, Sophocles, and Plato ! 



THE IMPERFECTIONS OF LIFE 1 25 

ethical attitude passes over into the specifically 
religious. Although we fall short, God is with us. 
The Ideal is not a cold and lonely summit of good- 
ness forever inaccessible to human effort. If we 
cannot now realize it by our own deeds, yet, as Hfe 
and love, it comes to us and dwells with us and heals 
and inspires us by its presence. 

The pubHcan went down to his house justified, — 
justified because in utter humihty and reverence 
before God's perfection he went home with the vision 
and worship of the perfect in his heart. For in truth 
the highest quaHty in human life is that spontaneous 
love and worship of Perfect Goodness of which the 
reverse side is the disparagement of one's self and the 
sense of failure and sin. To be still able to love and 
adore that Perfect Goodness in which there is no 
struggle and no gap between vision and achievement, 
between desire and deed, this it is that justifies or 
makes a man right in the midst of his own weakness 
and sin. 

For the heartfelt sense of sin and weakness arises 
from the midst of the very worship of Divine Per- 
fection or, as we might say, it is out of the very midst 
of the vision and love of God's goodness that there 
springs the confession of our own weakness. And 
the worshipful love of the Perfect becomes the spring 
and source of fresh strength for action. Out of 
our very sense of moral weakness there rises a fresh 
success, out of the very midst of our consciousness 
of failure and of impotence there rises the joy and 



126 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OT TO-DAY 

peace of the presence of the perfect in life. To love 
the perfect is to feel and confess our own imperfec- 
tions. But to love the perfect is to possess the per- 
fect and to be healed and strengthened by it. Hence 
to worship a Divine Holiness is at once to confess 
our own sinfulness and to possess a goodness that 
we did not achieve except as we have adored it. To 
love God because He is the All- Perfect One is to 
commune with Him through that love which lifts 
us above the actual or possible attainments of our 
wills and makes us actually one with Him. 

Yes, the soul of man is infinite in its demands ! 
No deluge of pleasures and riches and earthly honours 
vdll satisfy these demands. The soul of man is 
infinite in aspiration and no accumulation of scientific 
facts and laws, no outwardly successful round of 
conformity to moral laws, will satisfy that aspiration. 
The spirit must pass beyond fact and law discovered 
and duty fulfilled to love and adoration of a living 
Perfection, of perfect love revealed in a life. Here 
it is that science and morals (in the ordinary sense of 
conformity to the formulated laws of right) reach 
their term. Here it is that the spirit of man finds 
forgiveness and rest, realization of aspiration, the 
direct possession of the Perfect as Truth and Love 
in the vision of an Infinite Person, i.e. of a life which 
is the unity of perfect goodness and perfect wisdom. 

And this perfect life, the infinite Wisdom and Love 
whom the human spirit seeks, is the background of 
Jesus' whole life and teaching. 



THE IMPERFECTIONS OF LIFE 1 27 

But there is another aspect of the problem of life 
and its present imperfections. The vision of the 
perfect is not always with the soul, and when it 
comes, it stirs us anew and strengthens us to further 
endeavour in the ethical life. This vision inspires 
men to attain a greater self-control, a better direc- 
tion of the lower nature by the higher, and a fuller 
harmony between right aspiration and the prevail- 
ing habits of action. The vision of Divine Perfec- 
tion points and stirs men on in the work of making 
goodness a second nature^ i.e. a habit of their being. 
In other words, their vision stimulates to moral 
progress which men do indeed achieve though slowly. 
And what is the end or goal thereof? Surely at 
least an ever closer approximation to a state in which 
our feeling and our action shall be in perfect unison 
with the goodness and love embodied in the vision 
of God, in which the spirit of man shall live no 
longer in discordance but in harmony with his fel- 
lows, no longer having fitful gleams of God's per- 
fection but seeing Him more nearly as He is. 

And this ethical or spiritual progress implies the 
immortality of man's spirit. Not only must the spirit 
continue to exist in order that its ethical progress 
may go on, but it must exist eternally so that no spir- 
itual achievement may be lost. For there is no mean- 
ing in a goodness, perfection, love, which is not an 
attribute or quality of a living person or spirit. Un- 
less my own moral individuality is conserved, what- 
ever moral quality I attain and possess, whatever 



128 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

reverence for truth and justice, whatever life of love 
and fellowship, those, it would seem, are surely 
lost to the universe. For we cannot, in the ethical 
life, regard past deeds and achievements as ha\dng 
present being apart from the spirit or vdYL from which 
they issued and whose nature they at once expressed 
and further strengthened and developed, or, at 
least, apart from their continuing influence on li\ing 
spirits now inspired by contemplation of them.^ 

^ George Eliot's noble lines 

" O may I join the choir invisible 
Of those immortal dead," etc. 

are expressive of a genuinely inspiring and fundamental faith in 
immortality. No one who has earnestly gone to the spiritual his- 
tory of the race for guidance and inspiration at the hands of its 
great spiritual leaders can fail to appreciate the profound value 
and power of the continuing influence by which, as each successive 
generation of men runs the race that is set before it, its members, 
facing tasks that are ever old and yet ever new, are brought farther 
and farther forward on the path of spiritual achievement and into 
the ways of peace and insight, by communion with those great 
ones that have gone before and that, from the dawn of the spiritual 
life, have overcome passions, subdued mysteries, and banished 
fears, so that their successors might live more cleanly, strongly, 
gladly, and peacefully. But does not the inspiring quality of this 
faith in the immortality of the good in human history and in the 
racial commimion of saints presuppose a larger and more primal 
faith, viz. the faith that the race of man in its spiritual endeavours, 
achievements, insights, and joys, is one because it eternally 
rests on a supreme cosmic spiritual life? Is not faith in the 
moral continuity and spiritual solidarity of the race, regarded as 
immortal, grounded on the latent faith in one Universal and 
Eternal Spiritual Life that is ever manifesting and realizing itself in 
the spiritual ongoing of the race ? And does not this social per- 
sistence of the spirit involve a persistent element in the individual ? 



THE IMPERFECTIONS OF LIFE 1 29 

The feeling of the infinite worth and destiny of the 
human spirit in the recognition of its vocation to 
realize and be a free and rational personality, living 
in relations of love and communion v^ith other per- 
sons, involves as a necessary postulate the immor- 
tahty of the ethical will in the individual. The 
doctrine of immortahty is hence a corollary, not a 
premise of the ethical life. And in Jesus' teaching 
it is a consequent, not an antecedent, of the spiritual 
attitude which he inculcates and to which his life 
was the witness. It is because the soul has supreme 
value that it must be immortal. "Ye are of more 
value than many sparrows" (Matt. 10:31). "If a 
son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will 
he give him a stone?" etc. (Luke 11 : 11). 

It is because the personal life of love is the life of 
supreme worth for man that it is held to be eternal. 
Certainly in respect to goodness and the immortality 
of the good will the judgments of the Christian or 
disciple of Jesus, are, as has often been said, judg- 
ments of worth or value in distinction from judgments 
of bare unspiritual fact. That there is a lake seen 
through my window as I write, is a judgment of 
mere fact, which at the present moment has no bear- 
ing on or relation to my own aims and ideals as a 

Spirit is person and person is spirit. Every separate individual 
who enters into his spiritual heritage by meeting his moral obliga- 
tions and facing the issues of life must be an integral element in 
the immortal life of the race that is ever conserved and yet ever 
growing, and his being must be grounded on that universal and 
eternal life which manifests and fulfils itself in the race. 
K 



130 JESUS CHRIST AXD CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

moral being or spiritual person. On the other hand, 
the fact that- 1 have certain strong passions of love, 
ambition, intellectual interests, etc., involves judg- 
ments of fact that ob\iously do bear strongly on my 
moral nature. And if, for example, it were estab- 
lished as a fact, verifiable by any reasoning being, 
that the mind and will of man is a merely transient 
by-product of his bodily organism and that, conse- 
quently, there is nothing in the spirit of man that 
could possibly sur\ive the dissolution of his present 
body, personal immortahty or the conservation of 
spirit in any sense would be a delusion, and judgments 
of value, \iz. as to the enduring worth and meaning 
of the life of righteousness and love, of justice and 
peace, would be without adequate foundation in the 
nature of the imiverse. The entire moral and spir- 
itual life would be in such case a homeless waif in 
the cosmos. 

In the absence of any such conflicting proof of fact, 
our immediate con\'iction3 as to the supreme worth 
and meaning of justice, honesty, integrity, love, and 
peace, and as to the supreme worth of the li\itig per- 
sonahty, of which these abstract spiritual quahties 
are expressions, lead us to the judgment that this 
spiritual life of personality must be enduring, that 
it must be founded on the nature of things. Such 
is the meaning of sa}-ing that faith in immortahty 
rests on a judgment of value. Indeed this faith is 
the instinctive expression of man's ultimate or most 
final judgment of value, i.e. of the supreme meaning 



THE IMPERFECTIONS OF LIFE 131 

of that principle within himself which because it 
seeks justice, truth, and love, he feels with an im- 
mediate conviction to be the highest reality in the 
world. 

Now, on the other hand, the establishment as a 
verifiable fact, if such were possible, of the continued 
existence of conscious beings after death through 
their communication with the living, need have no 
moral value, no spiritual significance whatsoever. 
If this continued existence were a ghostly or even 
sensuous state involving no further scope for moral 
achievement, for spiritual insight, no eflSorescence 
in the wider, richer realms of truth, beauty, and 
love, of that life which at best seems to have only its 
crude beginnings now on earth, then the fact of 
continued existence would be devoid of spiritual 
significance. Instead of comforting and inspiring 
the best spirits with the resolve " to speed on, fight 
on, fare ever," it would chill them with despair at 
the triviality and insignificance, yes ! the mocking 
meaninglessness, of the issues of the human life. 

I do not say that psychical research, so-called, 
may not sometime have light to throw on the spir- 
itual meaning of existence. I wish only to insist that 
belief in some kind of ghostly or sentient continuance 
of existence, and in an immortal life radiant with 
fuller spiritual insight and quickened with larger 
scope for achievement and love, are separated by 
the whole diameter of being. 

The realm into which Christ introduces us and 



132 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

in which, under his leadership, we grow is that of 
the supreme ethical and spiritual values. It is the 
realm of social justice, of intellectual integrity, of 
peace and love and joy "in widest commonalty 
spread." This is not a realm of brute fact and phys- 
ical existence. The world of spiritual values and 
experiences is of another order than the world of 
body, and no facts in regard to the latter order are 
conclusive in regard to the possibilities of the former 
order. 

It can only be because of our immediate expe- 
riences or judgments of the supreme worth of the life 
of spiritual personality that we have a vital faith in 
the immortahty of the individual spirit. It would 
require a treatise on philosophy fully to demonstrate 
the dependence of truth in natural science and in 
all departments of knowledge, as well as the depend- 
ence of the moral and religious Hfe, on the faith in 
the supreme worth and reahty of the personal Ufe 
or will. It must suffice here to call attention to the 
principle that without the moving power of this con- 
viction of the inherent value of a rational spirit, the 
search for and possession of truth as well as of good- 
ness and beauty would be unmeaning. All these 
inherently worthful possessions are creations of a 
spirit which seeks to satisfy its demands for fuller 
being through them. 

In truth all our fundamental attitudes of thought 
and action are judgments of value or worthy i.e. 
expressions of what shall prevail for us — falsehood 



THE IMPERFECTIONS OF LIFE 1 33 

or truth; hate or love; discord or harmony; God 
or evil. These judgments are the deepest expres- 
sions of the inward personality; and the authority 
of a person, in this case the authority of the person- 
ality of Jesus for us, is the authority of certain judg- 
ments of worth. If we accept his judgments of 
worth, we should accept his person as normative for 
our lives, and this personal life under the leadership 
of Jesus will have for its necessary consequence the 
faith in the eternal quality of the life of the spirit 
in the individual. 

Although Jesus himself refrains from saying any- 
thing definite in regard to the precise character and 
conditions of the life after death except in the single 
instance where he characterizes it in negative terms, 
viz. "they neither marry nor are given in marriage,'^ 
the faith in individual immortality and the resur- 
rection from the dead into a life eternal and blessed 
constitute an integral part of his teaching. His 
sayings in regard to the perfect coming of the king- 
dom, and in regard to future judgment and reward, 
always involve this faith. See especially Matt. 5 : 
29 fif., 22:30, 25:34; Mark 10:17, 12:25; Luke 
20 : 35-36. In the last passage we are told the life 
eternal is the full entrance upon Divine Sonship : 
"And are sons of God, being sons of the resurrec- 
tion." And his doctrine of immortality is always con- 
ceived and presented in ethical or spiritual terms. The 
doctrine of individual immortality rests with him on 
the more primary and comprehensive doctrine of 



134 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

the absolute cosmic supremacy of the moral and 
spiritual order. Resurrection and eternal life are 
the consequences of the allegiance manifested by 
the indi\ddual to spiritual values. It is he who has 
faith in and practises righteousness and love, he who 
gives a cup of cold water in His name, he who feeds 
the hungry, clothes the naked, and visits those who 
are sick and in prison, he who is loyal to the principles 
of righteousness and love as taught by the Master, 
who enters into the great reward. Compare the 
wonderfully beautiful and simple passage on eternal 
life. Matt. 25 : 31-46. 

The eternal life begins here and now for him who 
accepts and afi&rms these spiritual values. Immor- 
tality is not a state to be extraneously tacked on to 
the present one. "The kingdom of God is within 
you" (Luke 17 : 21). 

Jesus' fundamental principle in this regard is 
the continuity of the moral and spiritual life now 
and hereafter. The future life whether good or evil, 
whether in the completed Kingdom of Heaven or 
in Gehenna, the realm of punishment, grows out 
of the present Hfe. Since the individual is now a 
participant in the spiritual issues of the world, so 
he must continue to be in the time to come. The 
fundamental teaching of Jesus is that the spiritual 
quahties of integrity in mind and heart, of loyalty 
to the good, of fellowship and service, of humble 
aspiration after and love for the Divine Goodness, 
are enduring and will be supreme and triumphant 



THE IMPERFECTIONS OF LIFE I35 

in the universe. These quaHties muhiply and pre- 
vail in the world in part through their affirmation 
by individual wills and their rule in the hearts of 
indi\iduals. And the wills and hearts in which these 
qualities rule have already entered into eternal life. 
Hence the faith in immortahty, in the resurrection 
and the future triumph of the good and subjection 
of the evil, is a consequence of the more primary and 
fundamental faith in the supremacy of the spirit. 
Jesus teaches the continuance of the individual life 
as a consequence that flows from the conviction that 
the moral drama of Hfe and of history will have a 
triumphant issue in the fiual and everlasting rule of 
the good and that, hence, the spirits of those who 
have affirmed the good and so cooperated with 
God — the Supremely Good — must endure and 
enjoy the fruition of- their labours in His perfected 
rule. 

The obverse of this belief in the eternal reward of 
righteousness is the punishment of the souls of those 
who have persistently chosen and wrought for evil 
(Matt. 5 : 29 f ., 10:28; Mark 9 : 43, 45, 47 f .). The 
spiritual torment of the wicked (Luke 12 .-5), like 
the spiritual joy of the righteous, is generally pre- 
sented in the gospels, in harmony with Jewish 
traditional views, as everlasting. This doctrine, how- 
ever, is not stressed and there are occasional indica- 
tions of a belief in a finite term of punishment and 
of the possibility of moral change in the intermediate 
state. Some are beaten with jew stripes (Luke 



136 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

12:46-48). The possibility of forgiveness in the 
next life seems to be implied in the statement that 
of only one sin, viz. that against the Holy Ghost, 
is it true that "neither in this world, nor in that which 
is to come" can it be forgiven (Matt. 12 : 32). Charles, 
art. "Eschatology," in Encyclopedia Biblica, suggests 
that the appeal of the rich man in Hades to Abra- 
ham is a sign of belief in the possibility of moral 
growth after death. However repugnant the notion 
of future punishment may be to the minds of this 
generation, the belief in a moral order of the imiverse 
surely implies that the reality of wrong-doing involves 
the reality of injury and suffering to the soul. Let 
retribution be conceived in purely spiritual terms, it 
is not thereby eliminated. Sin and loss of spiritual 
integrity, moral suffering and atrophy, remain 
realities none the less ; indeed much more, that their 
consequences are spiritual and deep graven in the 
soul and not administered by way of physical tor- 
ments. Mark 9 : 42 ff. is conclusive e\ddence that the 
punishment is spiritual. He who may be repelled 
by the words attributed to Jesus on this point is 
reminded, in the first place, of the great part which 
the idea of retribution plays in the evolution of mor- 
ality and of the tendency of the earlier and cruder 
forms of moral development to survive and intrude 
themselves at higher levels, and, as well, of the great 
pedagogical value of this idea now as always. Jesus 
speaks to awaken his hearers to the serious issues of 
life. The sayings that imply everlasting punishment 



THE IMPERFECTIONS OF LIFE 137 

may be regarded either as instances in which, in 
order to awaken men's thoughts to the issues of Hfe, 
he spoke to them of the great alternatives of the will 
in the terms and imagery current in his own age and 
among his own people, and hence best fitted to arouse 
them to a moral searching of heart ; or these sayings 
may be regarded as instances in which the gospel 
writers have insensibly coloured, with the traditional 
current ideas in which their minds were steeped 
and from which they are not yet wholly free, 
original sayings in which the Master spoke only 
of the tremendous present and future conse- 
quences of choice in the moral and spiritual realm. 
My own view is that Jesus meant to convey to his 
hearers' minds the possibiHty of spiritual self-destruc- 
tion. Only in the kingdom is there life. Far more 
deep-going and significant than the precise meaning 
of his occasional utterances on these points is the 
teaching of Jesus Christ as to God's infinite love and 
unwearying patience. This is the substance of his 
teaching and need be in no way seriously affected 
by one's interpretation of the origin and meaning of 
the sayings as to the future punishment. 

He who accepts Jesus' principles of life, and labours 
in aspiration and endeavour to reaHze these prin- 
ciples, may well refrain from vain and profitless 
speculations in regard to the precise nature of 
the future state. Such an one may well, without fear 
or despair, recognize the mysteries and hopeless 
puzzles that encompass any attempt to determine 



138 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

in what sense, if any, the memory of personal iden- 
tity may continue. He may well be content with 
the faith that no moral and spiritual achievement 
will be lost, that what is worthy to endure will endure, 
and that, so far as the individual participates in the 
spirit of the Master by aspiration, resolve, and 
deed, his life is eternal. All further questions as 
to the shape the future life may take, as to the range 
of future possibilities open to the individual, or as 
to what individuality may mean hereafter, he will 
leave aside, waiting serenely for the day when he 
may "see face to face" and know as he is known. 
Sufficient will be the faith that honesty, truth, loy- 
alty, justice, love, as quahties of the personal spirit 
must somehow endure. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE IDEA OF GOD 

(i) The Idea oj God in General 

The idea of God or of the ultimate Reality is not 
merely the supreme notion of the human reason . This 
notion is also of the utmost practical importance for 
the Hfe of man. No serious, thinking man is devoid 
of some conception of the ultimate reality of the 
universe and of some conviction, formulated or in- 
stinctive, of his own relation to that reality. Any 
man who thinks at all must recognize his dependence 
on some universal principle of being. He may re- 
gard the ultimate reahty simply as the sum-total or 
unity of the visible universe, as ''an Infinite and 
Eternal Energy from which all things proceed;" 
he may say the world is ruled by an inscrutable Fate ; 
he may try to conceive of the First Principle of things 
as a Universal Impersonal Spirit ; or he may believe 
in a Personal God. But in every case he feels his 
dependence on and the vital relation of his life to 
this ultimate unity. And in the deeper moments 
of his inner experience a man will adore or contem- 
plate with exaltation even an inscrutable Fate, a 
cosmic Energy, or an Impersonal Reason. In such 

139 



I40 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

moments the barest abstraction of thought becomes 
clothed by human feeling with quasi-personal char- 
acter and life. The human heart instinctively 
ascends in feeling to the Supreme Reality. This 
ascent appears to be an ineradicable impulse of hu- 
man nature. It is the ascent of the imperfect to 
the perfect, the flight of the changing and temporal 
to the unchanging and eternal, of the finite individ- 
ual to the infinite and absolute. And this impulse 
Godward, this search for the Perfect, instinctive and 
primal though it be, is enlarged and refined of its 
grosser elements with the growth of human thought. 
Science and Philosophy do not banish it. They 
only transform and purify the notion of God. 

Let us briefly consider, before taking account of 
Jesus' contribution to the idea of God, in what direc- 
tion and how far scientific and philosophic reflection 
will carry us. Let us inquire how far the human 
instinct for God seems to have a legitimate basis in 
thought. I do not propose to give here an elaborate 
disquisition on the philosophical idea of God or to 
discuss in detail the various historical arguments for 
the Divine Reality. I propose to sketch very briefly 
what I conceive to be the philosophical foundation 
of the notion of God in order that we may be able 
to see the more clearly what is the relation of Jesus' 
teaching to this notion and why his contribution 
has a distinctively ethical and spiritual character.^ 

^ I beg leave to refer the reader for a critical and metaphysical 
discussion of the idea of God to my Typical Modern Conceptions 



THE IDEA OF GOD 141 

The whole development of science points toward 
the unity 0} the universe. For early man the world 
was chaotic and fragmentary just as his oaah social 
and individual activity was devoid of system and 
order. But the growth in human control of nature 
and in the stable organization of society have gone 
hand in hand with the discovery of order in the uni- 
verse. Science proceeds upon the assumption, 
w^hich is triumphantly verified more fully from day 
to day, that the universe is a whole of interrelated 
parts. And the laws of nature, in Physics, Chem- 
istry, and Biology, are the general principles of these 
interrelations. We do not indeed yet know what 
is the relation of every bit of matter or every living 
thing or every change that takes place in things to 
the world as a whole, and, consequently, we cannot 
say completely in detail just how the physical or 
empirical world is one. But that all parts of the 
world-order are bound together in one system of 
relations, and that in this order nothing happens 
in one part or element without corresponding changes 
in the other things closely related to it, the progress 

oj God (Longmans, Green & Co., 190 1) and the concluding chap- 
ters of my Personality and Reality (in preparation). 

The reader who is interested in the philosophical foundations 
of the doctrine of God is further referred to Josiah Royce and 
others, The Conception oj God, and to Royce' s The World and the 
Individual; James Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, vol. ii. 
part v., James Martineau, A Study oj Religion; E. Caird, The 
Evoltction oj Religion; and in German to R. Eucken's Der 
Wahrheitsgehalt der Religion; G. Class, Die Realitdt der Gottes- 
idee, and H. Siebeck's Lehrhuch der ReligionsphUosophie. 



142 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATICX OF TO-DAY 

of scientific discovery entitles us to assume. Every- 
where we find that the facts which are given to us in 
our experience are held together by relations. And 
these relations of facts to one another, these inter- 
dependencies of things in the natural order on one 
another's occurrences and acti\aties, we express in 
our scienti-jic laws. When we say that bodies in 
space attract one another inversely as the square of 
the distance, or that bodies fall to the earth wdth a 
uniform acceleration of 9.8 metres per second, we 
are formulating relationships. These laws are the 
expressions of the unity of the universe. When we 
say that those organisms sur\ive and multiply which 
develop organs or functions that enable them the 
better to obtain food in a given en^dronment and to 
protect themselves against enemies, we are again 
expressing the unity that obtains between the living 
organisms and their physical en\dronment. And 
by a consideration of the progress that is constantly 
being made toward more comprehensive and more 
deep-reaching interpretations of the interrelations 
of things in the natural order we arrive at the notion 
that the universe is one, that the world which pre- 
sents itself in perception as a multitudinous variety 
of things, beings, and qualities, more or less in ap- 
parent confusion and opposition, is in reality held 
together by one universal principle. 

When we reflect more deeply on the nature of this 
imity in the universe we are carried farther. The 
unity of the universe exists for thought. It is a 



THE IDEA OF GOD 1 43 

known unity — a unity for human consciousness. 
Our conviction in regard to its reality grows as thought 
grows in the mastery of its materials of knowledge. 
But these materials, or data of thinking, a simple 
reflection reveals to be in the last resort matters of 
human experience. We know no world apart from 
human experience. Whatever conception of the 
world one may frame is derived finally from human 
perception. The unity of my world is a unity in and 
for my consciousness — a unity which grows out of 
my reflections on experience. And the case is pre- 
cisely similar with your world and your experience. 
You and I each must find law, order, interrelation, 
in the facts of his ovni perceptual experience if the 
world is to be rationally one for us — if it is to be 
a world in which we can make plans for the future 
— go to sleep expecting to work to-morrow while 
it is day or sow our seed in the autumn expecting to 
reap a harvest the following summer. We could 
make no rational provision for the future — we could 
not live even as the beasts that perish — without the 
assumption of some sort of unity and uniformity 
in the universe. 

Now you and I agree that we live in and experi- 
ence the same world. It is perhaps not strictly true 
that we do experience in our individual perceptions 
an absolutely identical world, and certainly the world 
as it is thought varies very much from man to man. 
But the differences between our worlds are negligible. 
We are members of the same human family, the same 



144 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Stage of civilized society, and we live under much 
the same general conditions of existence. We as- 
sume then that we perceive and know the same 
world. We cooperate in this world in order that 
we both may hve, rear our families, have joy in life, 
achieve things in this common world in which we 
meet as members of human society. This common 
universe then is for us the basis of our social relations 
on which our weal and woe so completely depend. We 
perceive and think, we cooperate and carry out our 
purposes, we realize our lives' ends in the same world. 
NoWj since for each one of us the world which we 
know as a unity is a world experienced and thought 
or reflected on, a world which is built up out of the 
materials of our own perceptions, since, in other 
words, the world as a unity has no meaning apart 
from human experience and reflection, if there really 
be a common world for you and me to know and to 
comm_une and cooperate in, its unity must be that 
supplied or constituted by a unitary experience and 
thought, i.e. by a universal world-consciousness. 
A world-unity absolutely independent of and un- 
related to any experience or any thinking conscious- 
ness is unintelligible. For you and me to find unity 
and rational order in our experiences, for us to meet 
on common ground and live in social relations, is 
to find ourselves and our experiences dependent on 
an ultimate and intelligible unity. What we mean 
by the "world" is a socially recognized basis of com- 
mon experience, a universal experience which ren- 



THE IDEA OF GOD I45 

ders intelligible the thought of a common world. 
On the basis of their common experience men, by 
cooperative thinking, have steadily progressed in 
the discovery of reason or order in the world as a 
whole. Hence the world-order as a whole must 
be dependent on an intelligible experience. When 
man discovers order in the world-whole, he is dis- 
covering its dependence on a mind somehow akin 
to his own. In science the human reason interrogates 
the outer world and receives an answer in terms of 
reason, and this answer is mind speaking to mind 
across the deeps of the physical world. In finding 
order in nature the mind of man is finding the Di- 
vine Reason. 

Thus we have a philosophical conception of God 
involved in the most elementary recognition of a 
world. The progressive unification of knowledge 
in man is inconceivable unless there be a unitary 
intelligence as the basis of a world. More specifi- 
cally, man's knowledge of the physical world as 
one or as a system of interrelated parts, existing 
and moving in an orderly manner, would be impos- 
sible v^thout his social life. It has been through 
intercommunication, cooperation, and the trans- 
mission of experience and its interpretations from 
age to age that mankind has gradually arrived at 
the notion of one universe of law or order. The 
most rudimentary social life or cooperation and com- 
munion of man with man involves this recognition of 



146 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

a common world. Moreover, through the growth 
of human society in stabiHty and organization which 
in turn brings and involves increasing mastery over 
nature, and through that conception of law or order 
in events and actions which has grown out of the 
very submission of the individuals impulses to social 
custom and law, there arises the notion of a like order 
or law in the physical world. 

The unitary intelligence or universal self-conscious- 
ness is, then, conceived as the common source and 
groimd of order in nature and of order in human 
society. And, since it is the work of society to sub- 
ordinate nature to human ends and so to further the 
fuller achievement of human purposes, the unitary 
intelligence who is the universal common groimd of 
natural order and social order must be conceived as 
sustaining and furthering somehow in a systematic 
unity of life and action the most comprehensive ends 
or purposes of human society and of the indi\ddual 
life. So man's highest philosophical conception of 
God is teleological and social, i.e. God is conceived 
as somehow originating and directing the course of 
the whole universe in harmony with the highest 
interests and ends of social humanity. And here 
we reach the limits of philosophical inquiry in this 
matter and, indeed, find ourselves already on de- 
batable ground. For the higher we rise in our con- 
ception of the cosmic intelligence and the more 
closely we bring our conception of Him into harmony 
with human interest, purpose, and destiny, the more 



THE IDEA OF GOD 147 

vague our conception becomes and the more difficult 
to square with the tangled facts of experience. For 
human purposes are defeated as well as realized. 
Human life and ideals sometimes seem to be the 
sport of blind chance. Even the spiritual life seems 
sadly hindered by the contingencies of the natural 
order. Physical weakness brings grinding poverty 
and poverty cramps the development of the higher 
side of man's life. A clot on the brain seems to 
cause the total ecHpse of a bright and brave spirit. 
The inference from the unity of the universe in our 
experience and thought to the unity of a supreme 
intelHgence is perfectly valid. The inference to an 
ethical purpose and character in the universal con- 
sciousness or mind is a postulate derived from and 
supported by the unity of human society in and for 
which the world exists as an intelligible universe. 
But the specific and definite harmony of the originat- 
ing and sustaining activity of the Supreme Mind 
with the higher interests and aims of society and, 
more especially, with the highest life of the individual 
seems at best to be a conception having only a 
probable value. The evolution of human society 
and its achievements in science, arts, and morals, 
point toward such a teleological notion of God as 
in harmony with human aims and as sustaining the 
historical and social evolution of culture. But in 
the last resort, the belief in such a harmony, while it 
has a rational justification in the facts of human 
evolution in knowledge and morals, must rest in a 



148 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

personal deed and experience. Theoretically we may 
legitimately infer the existence of a supreme mind 
manifested in the systematic unity of the natural 
order and revealed more fully in the development of 
man's historical and social life. Practically this 
inference becomes a concrete and living conviction 
or reality in the experience of the individual as a self- 
active spiritual being who reaHzes his higher life in 
society through the successful pursuit of ends and 
in obedience to ideals. 

There remains then yet one other consideration 
and indeed, to the ethical spirit of man, the very 
strongest consideration of all, from which the inference 
to the existence of a Supreme Holiness and Righteous- 
ness is drawn. This is the argument from the abso- 
lutely binding force of a moral ideal, the sense of 
an unconditional obligation to think and do right. 
For the man in whom the ethical spirit is alive justice 
and truth represent unconditional obligations. He 
must and will act as if they must prevail in the world 
and his action implies the belief that they will pre- 
vail. The supreme obligation to follow after truth 
and justice and to endeavour to make these ideals 
effective in human society rests upon the faith in a 
moral order of the universe. The man who elects to 
be honest, to be just, to seek and speak truth at what- 
ever cost, in so acting postulates the supremacy of 
these ethical principles over the brute facts of nature 
and history. But in the last analysis all moral 
qualities inhere in persons. There is nothing un- 



THE IDEA OF GOD 1 49 

conditionally good but the good will or disposition 
of an individual spirit. All so-called "goods" are to 
be tested by their relation to human character. And 
in a final analysis all social principles of ethics 
refer to relations between persons or at least between 
sentient beings. We may owe duties to animals, but 
we certainly owe none to brute matter or energy. 

If there be an ultimate moral order such that the 
good does or will in the end prevail, if the natural 
order of existence is subordinate and subservient to 
the moral order, this order in turn must be embodied 
in a Person. If justice and truth prevail, if the good 
triumph finally then, since moral qualities belong 
only to conscious selves, there must be a Supreme 
and Righteous Self or Person. 

Thus from a consideration of what is involved in 
the unconditioned obligations to truth and justice 
and righteousness we are led necessarily to the notion 
of a Personal God, not, as Kant urged, in order that 
virtue and happiness may be made to coincide, but 
that -^drtue or moral goodness may prevail or triumph 
and endure. And if we feel an unconditioned or 
in\dolable obligation to serve truth and justice, 
we cannot believe that these principles may perish or 
that they have no standing in the real imiverse. 

Of course the force of this argument depends on 
the recognition of the absolute supremacy of moral 
principles. He for whom social justice or indi- 
vidual righteousness simply means the greatest 
possible pleasure, or for whom the true is only the 



150 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

useful, will not be influenced by such considerations. 
For such an one God at the most would be the 
dispenser of pleasures, the ruler of a Mahommedan 
paradise filled with houris and sweet viands where, 
to use Heine's phrase, roast geese flew about with 
gravy-boats in their bills. 

(2) Jesus' Idea oj God 

Profound convictions as to man 's destiny and place 
in the universe and as to God 's nature and attitude 
toward man have always arisen and spread in the 
shape of facts and influences in the historical-spirit- 
ual life oj man. In particular the ideas of God which 
have prevailed in and powerfully influenced human 
culture have been the utterance of great personaH- 
ties not only in word but in deed. By living and 
doing rather than arguing and demonstrating have 
Moses and Isaiah, Mahomet and Luther, profoundly 
influenced men's religious convictions. 

And, in a supreme degree, Jesus' personal attitude 
and life have been the source of the revolution he has 
wrought in men's ideas concerning God and in their 
vital and active feelings and con\dctions in regard to 
Him. I have already said that the vital conviction 
of a God as a spiritual being standing in actual 
relation to the spiritual experiences and ethical deeds 
of the individual springs from the innermost depths 
of the human personality. This conviction is the 
offspring and expression of the heart or whole 
nature oj man. Now it was {and it is) through his 



THE IDEA OF GOD 151 

influence on the entire personality, on the heart and 
will of the individual man, that Jesus wrought (and 
still works) his revolution in men's thought in re- 
gard to God's character and attitude toward man. 
Jesus does not argue and does not demonstrate 
God's being. He gives no proofs, ontological, 
cosmological, or teleological, of God's existence. He 
assumes that there exists a Supreme Mind or Person, 
all-powerful, all-knowing, all-Holy. He assumes 
the supreme unity of Truth and Power in a Di^ane 
Intelligence. He places first, as the supreme attri- 
bute in God, the governing principle in His relation 
to man — Love. Love that transcends, and uses as 
its instrument, omnipotence and omniscience, Love 
that passes beyond mere justice and righteousness, 
Love infinite in patience and forgiveness and eternal 
in well-doing, Jesus declares to be the heart of God. 
This is his unique and unparalleled contribution to 
the idea of God. This is his revolution in ethical 
theology. The doctrine of God which Jesus offers 
is absolutely ethical and spiritual. 

Now he does not argue men into accepting this 
\dew of God. He does not demonstrate logically 
that it must be true. He affirms it as an unshaken, 
sun-clear intuition of God which he himself possesses 
in absolute measure. The word "Father" had been 
applied to God before Jesus used the term. But 
what a w^orld of new meaning it gets in Jesus' mouth ! 
How without argument or theological disquisition he 
revolutionized men's feelings about God ! Through 



152 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Jesus men jeel the Father's living presence and are 
made joyful in the new-found sense of God's personal 
presence and interest in them and in their lives. 
''Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need 
of all these things " (Matt. 6 : 32). " God is not the 
God of the dead, but of the living " (Matt. 22 : 32, 
Mark 12:27, etc.). "If ye then, being evil, know 
how to give good gifts unto your children, how much 
more shall your Father which is in Heaven give good 
things to them that ask Him?" (Matt. 7: n, etc.). 
No, Jesus offers no theoretical demonstration of 
God's existence. He does not discourse concerning 
God's infinitude or finitude. His transcendency or 
immanency. His substantiality, or actuality, the 
creation of the world in time or out of time, etc. 
His demonstration of God's reality and nature is 
the challenge and appeal of a perfect ethical or 
spiritual personality to a humanity that is seeking 
the highest. Jesus' notion of God is absolutely 
ethical or spiritual. It is in the heart of man, in the 
innermost citadel of the affections, in the central 
source of human will and action, in the concrete 
personal spirit, that Jesus works a transformation in 
man's sense of the Divine Reality. And he works 
this transformation by virtue of his own personal 
power, by the total impress and inspiration of a 
God-filled human character. That which stands 
out supreme in the pages of the gospel is the God- 
penetrated human personality of the master. Jesus' 
lije was his contribution to man's knowledge of God. 



THE IDEA OF GOD 1 53 

His whole personality was the source of the transfor- 
mation he wrought in men's feelings about God and 
this transformation was preeminently ethical. It 
was and ever is an inward new birth and a redemp- 
tion in which the twice-born soul is an active partici- 
pant. 

For Jesus works the great change in men's hearts 
by force of a personal appeal which challenges men 
to deeds, to new resolves and choices. He calls forth 
ever renewed ethical endeavour and he reveals new 
reaches of spiritual experience, in that he leads men 
through the demands of ethical justice and love to 
communion with God. The effect of his influence 
is to deepen men's sense of the meaning and worth 
of the higher personal life in all humanity. Faith 
in God becomes simply the completer experience of 
the eternal basis of ethical deeds and the ground of 
fresh spiritual aspiration. Jesus calls men to 
spiritual deeds, to deeds of justice, of mercy, of love, 
to a devotion in which the lower or sensuous life of 
the individual is merged and transformed in the 
service of a spiritual humanity. Through these 
spiritual deeds men's experiences grow in depth and 
purity. Through them men gain the practical 
conviction of God's personal nature as Sustainer and 
Ground of the higher or ethical life in human per- 
sons. Spiritual faith in God begins in vital deeds. 
Through the personal act of faith the venture and 
the deed ripen to new insight, to deeper experience. 
Faith thus becomes an ethical or spiritual act — a 



154 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

deed of freedom. And the act of faith becomes 
anticipatory of fuller knowledge of God. As men 
work for the true, the just, for love and beauty in 
human hfe, the con\dction must grow upon them that 
their spiritual deeds are permanent in effect and 
meaning and this implies the conviction of God's 
ReaHty as Supreme and Holy Personality. The 
service of the larger life, the life of truth and justice 
and love in human relations, deepens men's insight 
into God's nature as sustainer of the ethical life in the 
indi\ddual. Through their own personal growth in 
the ethical life men come to see that God reveals 
Himself in the social and historical development 
of the human spirit as well as in the inmost 
secret centre of the personal Hfe. It is through 
this active service of the good that men gain 
the conviction that nature is really and ultimately 
subordinate to human ends and that the social and 
historical development of humanity, in all its institu- 
tions and activities, gets permanent significance only 
in so far as these things serve as instruments of the 
higher spiritual life. Through this personal service 
men come to see in God the supreme ground of all. 
He is known through personal ethical deeds, through 
communion with and participation in the work of 
humanity. Jesus calls men to these deeds. He 
stirs up in them these experiences. He has done so 
through his life, but also through his death. For 
in him teaching and deed were absolutely one and 
harmonious. His death was the supreme deed of 



THE IDEA OF GOD 155 

his life, for it was the final and complete expression 
of the purpose and meaning of his life. Hence the 
supreme ethical significance of that death. The life 
had been the perfect embodiment of the absolute 
Love of God which was Jesus ' one message to man. 
He lived as the incarnation of his message and his 
death was the seal thereof. And the resurrection has 
its ethical and spiritual significance as the expression 
of the triumph of the Personal Spirit of Jesus, the 
perfect embodiment of Love, over brute nature and 
the forces of evil in human society. Faith in the 
resurrection is the symbol of Faith in Righteousness 
and Love as Triumphant and Divine. Since, more- 
over, ethical qualities always inhere in persons or 
spiritual selves, this faith must and does take the 
form of faith in the continued personal existence of 
Jesus Christ and of his spiritual presence in the lives 
of the individual and the church. 

Through Jesus' personality as teacher and doer, 
then, the moral postulate of the Reality of a supreme 
ethical Person or Absolute Spirit becomes a histori- 
cally potent faith rooted in and growing through 
ethical activity and aspiration. Hence it is that 
faith in God as more than at best an impersonal 
intelligence or abstract ethical world-order is gener- 
ated through contact with Jesus and through ac- 
ceptance of his challenge to spiritual action. Hence 
it is that communion with a hving and loving God is 
historically mediated through Jesus. 

From the ethical standpoint, then, we may say that 



156 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

the supreme deed of Jesus, the source of his abiding 
meaning and efficiency in the spiritual history of 
man, is the creation in the human heart of the h\Tng 
and gro^-ing con\iction of the Reahty of a Trans- 
cendent or Absolute Spirit of Righteousness and Love 
who rules and guides the m^ovement of human 
history as well as that of external nature. 

Through his life and through his summons to 
deeds in devotion to man's spiritual life Jesus in- 
spires men with the confidence that at the heart of 
the universe there dwells not an impersonal abstrac- 
tion, but a Life and Love in which we share. 

This confidence must begin perhaps weakly in a 
personal venture or act of faith. But in him who 
companies with Jesus it grows into something Hke 
full insight. Faith becomes anticipatory to know- 
ledge. But whether the relationship be one preemi- 
nently of faith or insight, in any case it is rooted in 
personal deeds — in acts of spiritual freedom. And, 
in affirming the true, the just, and the merciful, man 
is always on the road to this faith. 

We have said that Jesus' contribution to the idea 
of God was that of a personal life. And when we 
have fathomed the secret and mysterious move- 
ments of personality and traced to their ultimate 
source the up-welling fountains of inspiration that 
come out of the heart of a perfect life, then and 
only then may we claim to have sounded the depths 
of the religion of Jesus. 

But there is one problem that arises in connection 



THE IDEA OF GOD 157 

with the ethical conception of God which we have 
not considered and we must at least discuss Jesus' 
practical attitude thereto. This is the problem of 
evil. 

(3) The Problem oj Evil 

Jesus offers no theoretical justification of God's 
goodness in relation to the evil of the world. He 
does not theorize at all on this matter. Evil is for 
him a condition of actual existence to be faced and 
conquered rather than to be theorized about or 
explained away. Nevertheless if we look closely at 
his practical attitude we shall find it involves a 
doctrine of evil and a theodicy or justification of the 
ways of God. 

And what we have in mind here is the problem of 
moral evil, of the reahty of sin in a universe which is 
dependent upon and governed by an All-Holy Being. 

In order that we may see clearly the nature of the 
issue here we must carefully distinguish between the 
existence of physical evil, natural catastrophes, physi- 
cal suffering, the untimely death of the brightest 
and best, etc., and the actuahty of human wrong- 
doing, of moral failure and deliberate sin. 

I have already dealt with the problem of physical jl-^ 
or natural evil in the chapter entitled "Nature and '^^^\ 
Human Nature." I may here remind the reader 
that Jesus does not regard external misfortunes and 
physical sufferings as the fruits of individual guilt. 
"Or those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam 



158 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

fell and killed them thinkest thou that they were sin- 
ners above all men?" (Luke 13 : 4). "And fear not 
them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the 
soul ; but rather fear him that hath power to destroy 
both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10 : 28). 

Jesus is ever tender and compassionate toward 
suffering and misfortune. But these he simply 
recognizes as part of the natural order in an imper- 
fect world. He does not even trace the origin of these 
physical evils to the fall of Adam. He does not say 
that we are all enmeshed in a social doom from 
which some may be snatched by God's unsearch- 
able decrees. Jesus clearly sees that while moral 
evil sometimes brings physical suffering in its train, 
this is by no means always the case, and he calls on 
his disciples to alleviate, as he alleviates, suffering and 
to overcome and to free themselves from the fear of 
physical evil. 

His fundamental attitude is that the spiritual life 
of man is superior to all shapes of physical evil, that 
it can endure throughout the direst suffering and that 
the exercise of this heroic endurance and the coura- 
geous assertion of the inviolability of the soul in the 
face of physical wreck is rewarded by a deeper 
happiness. Jesus teaches further that there is an 
eternal law of compensation in the universe. Laz- 
arus who hungered and suffered on earth, in para- 
dise lies on Abraham's bosom while the self-indulgent 
and impitying rich man suffers torments. 

On the other hand the entire teaching and appeal 



THE IDEA OF GOD 1 59 

of Jesus to the spirit and will of man involves his 
belief in man's moral responsibility. The soul of 
the individual is endowed with power to choose and 
on it are imposed tremendous responsibilities. "If 
thine eye be evil, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. 
It is better to enter into life with one eye, rather than 
having two eyes to be cast into hell fire " (Matt. 

18:9)- 

The origin of moral evil is in the will of the indi- 
vidual. The possibilities of sin reside in the in- 
herited nature of man by which the indi\idual is 
tied up wdth the life of the race. The materials of 
human character lie in the inherited dispositions, 
inborn tendencies of the indi\idual, and by these his 
life is bound up with the past of his race. Further- 
more a man's actual character is largely dependent 
on the influence of social and even of physical en- 
\ironments. All these forces making for the de- 
termination of character Jesus recognizes. ''Unto 
whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be 
required" (Luke 12 : 48). But in the last resort the 
moral quality of man rises from his heart. In the 
tragic issues of life Jesus holds that sin is the off- 
spring of the human will. He sees in its universal 
possibiHty for man the consequence of that powxr 
of free self-determination by which alone man is 
higher than brute-nature and able to direct his ovm 
growth God ward. The problem of moral evil then, 
as Jesus treats it, reduces itself to the ultimate nature 
of free moral beings. Since men are free, sin becomes 



l6o JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

a reality through the weakness of the higher will as 
against the lower impulses and, in some cases, through 
the apparently demoniacal preference of eWl to good. 

Jesus recognizes fully the reahty of moral enl or 
sin. He deepens men's sense of its enormity and its 
dread power over life. And he does not attempt the 
impossible task of showing why or how the existence 
of beings ^ith the possibihty of e\il in their hearts 
is a necessary consequence of God's creative acti^dty. 
He does not teach men either that God was or was 
not Hmited to this present world-order in his choice 
of a world to call into being. Jesus simply takes the 
world as it exists to be dependent on God without 
calling into question God's goodness or His infinite 
power in creating this world. 

And in this world, as he looks it squarely in the 
face, Jesus finds in the hearts of men the dread 
possibihties and actualities of sin. But this is not 
all that he has to say. Weak though he be, man 
has yet the power to respond to the call of the good. 
Awful though e\'il seem to be, it is overcome by love. 
Mysterious and tragic seems the life of man aspiring 
heavenward but ever falling back into the mire. But 
man is through all a child of God — an offspring of 
a Cosmic, Personal Love, and this Love is ever tri- 
umphant over e\dl. It is quite true that Jesus 
recognizes the existence of a positive principle of e^dl 
in the world of human society. He uses the terms 
of contemporary Hebrew thought for this principle. 
Like his fellow-countrymen he speaks of Satan as 



THE IDEA OF GOD l6l 

a person and as the prince of evil. To use the terms 
current in his time was a part of Jesus' pedagogical 
method. Without going into the question whether 
all these sayings in regard to Satan are genuine utter- 
ances of the Master, we may say that it is in entire 
consonance with Jesus' ethical teaching that he 
should have recognized the solidarity of the race in 
respect of evil as well as of good, and no other great 
teacher has ever so clearly seen and taught the social 
or communal interdependence of the human race. 
And it is a corollary of this social solidarity that the 
innocent should suffer for the guilty, and that men 
should be redeemed from the power of the positive 
principle of evil in the race by the absolute devotion 
of the good. The spread of evil through heredity 
and social contagion must be checked and overcome 
through the contagious inspiration and power of love. 
Jesus' recognition of the necessity of his death for the 
completion of his work and teaching is the clearest 
expression of this principle. He dies that men may 
know and be touched by the power of love over evil 
and hatred. 

Nor does Jesus deny that there may be some 
ultimate mysterious connection of moral evil with 
physical evil. The very solidarity of the race, which 
he expHcitly recognizes, impHes some relation be- 
tween physical suffering and moral evil. What 
Jesus does explicitly deny is that the physical evil 
or suffering which overtakes the individual is of 
necessity either the consequence of his own wrong- 



1 62 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

doing or that of his parents, or even that physical evil 
or suffering has a merely disciplinary character. 
Natural catastrophes, unavoidable pain, and mental 
suffering are simply to be taken as things to be 
endured and made the best of through faith in the 
Absolute or Supreme Love v^ho will not permit the 
soul that heroically believes and endures to suff'er any 
final and irreparable loss. The power of God's 
love to restore the sinner and the wanderer to his 
true destiny of communion with God Himself is 
limited only by the presence or absence of man's 
initial act of turning, howsoever weakly and blindly, 
toward the good and of opening his soul to the cur- 
rents of spiritual life that flow from the Father's 
heart. 

Jesus sees in the actual moral evil of humanity 
the mysterious blending of ignorance and error with 
deliberate choice, the inextricable interfusion of the 
personal attitude of wrong-doing with the weakness 
of inherent tendencies and wild natural passions. He 
sees the taint of evil social influence warping the 
naturally good tendencies of the soul. Even in his 
bitterest enemies he sees the fatal blindness of tradi- 
tion and the power of prejudice and authority inter- 
woven \\dth conscious and personal hostihty to the 
higher good revealed in himself. Even here in the 
last crisis of his life, with the insight of a super- 
human Love, Jesus recognizes that the souls of these 
who repudiate absolute love and goodness and 
crucify him for his devotion to man's righteousness 



THE IDEA OF GOD 163 

and eternal blessedness are warped by ingrained 
prejudice, blinded by the fateful influences of ec- 
clesiastical authority and national pride. He does 
not attempt to separate the error from the evil, to sift 
the conscious element of sin from the force of igno- 
rance. His words are — "Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do " (Luke 23 : 34). Jesus 
sees the mystery and tragedy involved in the confused 
intermixture of error and sin in human life, of 
vicious habit ignorantly acquired, of love turned to 
lust, of noble strength turned to destruction, by the 
force of circumstances and the harsh condemnation 
of a world cold and blind in its judgments. He 
warns his disciples — " Judge not, that ye be not 
judged" (Matt. 7: i). 

But, notwithstanding all the sin and error in the 
world, men are still children of God. The Father 
welcomes the prodigal son. There is ever joy 
in heaven that the errant son has wakened to a 
consciousness of his true destiny and turned his 
steps homeward. Over all evil and ignorance there 
rules supreme a Divine Love and Grace. Man is 
in essence a moral and spiritual being. As such he 
must, by his own actions and through his own in- 
dividual experience, find God, and in finding God find 
his own true selfhood. And the practical solution of 
the problem of evil which Jesus offers is that when 
man does awake to a sense of his Divine destiny and 
seek God's righteousness there is at the heart of 
things a Supreme Love with the power and the will to 



164 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

free him from the misery and the burden of sin. The 
problem of e\dl is solved through the conviction that 
a Personal, Cosmic Love works in and with the 
human will in its endeavours after goodness. This 
conviction Jesus engenders by his teaching and his 
life and death. His whole earthly career was the 
utterance of this conviction. His death was the final 
act of affirmation of the absolute supremacy of Love 
and Grace in the imiverse. The whole earthly 
career of Jesus was the witness to his unshakable 
assurance of the triumph of Righteousness and Love 
in the universe, and the faith in his resurrection and 
continued existence are the seal and symbol of that 
assurance bom in the hearts of the sons of men by 
companionship with the Master. 

For the follower of Jesus, then, the problem of evil 
is not solved by denying its reality or asserting that 
God is limited by it. The practical solution of the 
problem lies in the total influence of Jesus' life, death, 
and risen life by which men are awakened to the 
con\dction that their true and ethical destiny is to 
be co-workers with God and so sharers in the spiritual 
movement of the universe. Faith in Jesus is the 
expression of faith in the triumph of personal good- 
ness and love in the universe. Faith in Jesus is 
hence an ethical faith and it strengthens man's 
powers to strive for the good while at the same time 
it cheers him with the knowledge that, though he 
may fall far short through ignorance or sin, God's 
supreme attribute is Love. Through the out-going 



THE IDEA OF GOD 1 65 

of this love without stint the better tendencies of 
human nature are strengthened to overcome the evil 
within the heart and to bear the ills incident to human 
nature. 

Jesus' own personal life and attitude is his solution 
of the problem of evil. If he be the true expression of 
God's attitude toward man, then is evil already 
overcome. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS' TEACHING AND OF 
OTHER ETHICAL SYSTEMS 

The whole earthly career of Jesus Christ was the 
incorporation of his teaching in life and action. His 
ethical principles constitute a coherent whole, but 
they are not a cunningly devised system put to- 
gether by reflection. They are a series of genial 
intuitions, that flow spontaneously from a living 
personality whose meaning and the secret of whose 
influence they do not exhaust. As we study them, 
these ethical or spiritual intuitions lead us back to 
him and, indeed, they seem but the casual utterances 
of a spirit so infinitely rich and full that we cannot 
comprehend it in the mystery of its strength and beauty, 
but that we grow to feel more fully as we endeavour 
to live out its promptings. Hence the living and 
perennial power of Jesus as an ethical teacher. 
Many philosophical systems of ethics seem more 
rigorous and systematically complete than his ; but, 
perhaps, in part, for this very reason they one and all 
lack the touch of life and the power of expansion. 

Let us pause for a moment to compare the ethical 
influence of Jesus' teaching with more formal sys- 

i66 



THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS ' TEACHING 1 67 

terns. The two great ethical schools of the Graeco- 
Roman world diverged greatly in their definitions of 
the summum bonum, since according to the Epicu- 
reans this was pleasure, pure and lasting ; an aesthetic 
enjoyment of life attained through moderation of 
desire, reflection, and social urbanity of disposition ; 
and, according to the Stoics, a life in harmony with 
reason or nature. But these schools converged in 
their picture of the ideal wise man or sage, whose 
chief concern was to make himself proof against 
*'the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," by 
keeping himself free from all social, poHtical, and 
family entanglements and so independent of all 
intense affections and external vicissitudes. The 
Stoics identified the nature of things with Reason, 
and, hence, for them a Hfe guided by reason was a life 
according to nature, a happy life. The Epicureans 
taught that a Hfe of pleasure or happiness, lasting 
and free from admixture of pain, was attainable only 
through a reflective serenity of mind and a prudent 
detachment of heart, since only in this way could a 
man insure his own freedom from extremes of inner 
feeling and from the power of vicissitudes of circum- 
stance to hurt him. Hence the Epicurean employed 
reason to attain purity and duration of pleasurable 
feeling and eschewed the violent commotions of the 
coarser pleasures; whereas the Stoic, subduing 
emotion by the exercise of will and reason, found a 
mild and lasting pleasure therein. Starting with 
apparently antithetical aims, Stoic and Epicurean 



1 68 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

sage arrived at pretty nearly the same goal. The 
wise man of both schools was a refined and philo- 
sophical egoist who would allow no social ties, of 
whatsoever description, to encroach on his serenity 
of mind. He would give no hostages to fortune. 
It is true the great Stoics ^ contributed m-ore that is 
positive to human culture than did the Epicureans. 
There is in the former a strain of stem strength, a 
tonic quality of mind, that the latter lack. The 
Stoics developed in some degree a feeling of obliga- 
tion, which led them bravely to face the tasks that 
confronted them, although no social or political 
activity could be to them of first importance ethically. 
Stoicism fostered a manly and vigorous type of 
character in which all stress was laid on the inward, 
moral disposition. The Stoics advanced the doctrine 
of a common humanity, a universal brotherhood, 
based on the view that all men are fundamentally 
alike ; since they are all the offspring of the natural 
order and have all a share in the universal reason or 
law which is the soul of nature. So far their teaching 
approximates to the ethics of Jesus. But the Stoics 
were prone to place a wide gap between the few 
wise men who recognized the rationality and good- 
ness of the natural order and the many fools. 
Hence, while recognizing fully the value of this 
teaching, especially in furnishing a philosophical 
foundation for the administration of justice in the 
Roman Empire and in developing a more humane 

^ Zeno, Chrysippus, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus. 



THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS' TEACHING 1 69 

disposition, one may rightly insist that the Stoic 
principles were well-nigh devoid of moral dynamic. 
They lacked the creative, spiritual energy that the 
ancient world needed ; they were deficient in warmth 
and devotion and had not the power to enkindle 
a new world-movement. They expressed no gentle 
and yet burning love for men. There is a long inter- 
val between the theoretical deduction of universal 
brotherhood from the common dependence of man 
on nature or on an abstract Universal Reason, and 
active love for man based on the faith in the infinite 
value of the individual soul in the eyes of a Common 
Father whose inmost nature and attitude toward 
mankind is believed to have been embodied in a 
historical human personality who has so perfectly 
embodied the principle that the very memory of him 
enkindles passionate devotion and enthusiastic 
love. 

In many respects the ethics of that greatest of 
philosophers, Plato, remind one of the gospels. His 
saying that it is better to suffer than to do injustice 
is prophetic of the teaching of Jesus.^ His picture 
of the idealized Master, Socrates, reminds one in some 
respects of the gospel portrait of the Christ, especially 
in the manner in which he bears witness to his 
doctrine by his death. Plato's doctrine of the good, 
as the supreme cosmic principle, strongly resembles 
the gospel teaching in regard to the Heavenly 
Father who is alone Good. And the Platonic 

1 The Reptihllc, Book II. 



170 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

notion of Eros, or love, the burning enthusiasm or 
devotion that carries the soul onward and upward 
from lower to higher, from things of sense to things 
of the mind, from bodily beauty up through mental 
beauty to the beauty of goodness, until at last it 
finds repose and joy in the contemplation of the 
Suprem.e Good, is not unlike the gospel doctrine of 
that love for righteousness and peace which inspires 
and guides men toward perfection in the image of a 
Heavenly Father.^ 

None the less, there are great differences between 
the ethics of Plato and the ethics of Jesus Christ. 
Plato's way of salvation is for the few who have and 
develop the power of reflective contemplation. It is 
speculative and aristocratic. The mass of men do 
not and cannot attain unto it. They must remain 
simply hewers of wood and drawers of water. The 
highest \'irtue to which the artisan and merchant 
class in Plato's ideal cormnon wealth can attain is 
temperance. They have no immediate part in 
justice, ix. they do not directly participate in its 
realization, — much less in wisdom, the highest 
^drtue, the ^^rtue of the noblest part of the soul. 
Moreover, the Supreme Good in Plato's system is, 
after all, an unhistorical abstraction, a metaphysical 
entity; not a living personality who stands in re- 
ciprocal or social relations of love with men. The 
Supreme Good of Plato is not a living principle 
that enters into organic relations with men in society 

^ See especially the Symposium. 



THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS' TEACHING 171 

and that fulfils itself through sympathy and labour 
in the historical life of humanity. 

Hence, while Plato clearly sees the necessity of the 
social hfe to the full fruition of humanity, the goal 
of the philosopher lies beyond the personal and 
social life. The philosopher only takes part re- 
luctantly in the affairs of state. He does not find 
his highest life in service but in contemplation. 
Hence, too, the ascetic and dualistic strain that often 
predominates in Plato, although by no means always ; 
e.g. not in the Republic. Withdrawal from the 
world and the denial of the bodily Hfe with its mani- 
fold claims and interest are necessary to the attain- 
ment of Wisdom, the highest Good. It is, of course, 
true that the lowlier virtues of temperance and 
courage are the necessary prerequisites to the attain- 
ment of the higher virtues of justice and wisdom, and 
the way to perfection lies through the social Hfe. 
Nevertheless for Plato ethical perfection is attained 
by contemplation and thought. It lies beyond the 
social Hfe. As the teaching of Jesus knows no 
distinction of higher and lower in virtue, so it knows 
no state of blessedness in which one's fellows may be 
forgotten. God himself is a social Being. 

Modem systems of ethics that have been influential 
have, in so far as they have gone beyond Greek ethics, 
arisen from a common moral consciousness into which 
the Christian element has entered as a dominant, 
transforming influence. These independent sys- 
tems have unconsciously drawn upon Christian 



172 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

motives, ideas, and aims that have become worked 
into the very fibre of moral tradition. The seeming 
independence of these modern systems is due in large 
part to the fact that, drawing from a common and 
generally diffused moral consciousness, which is the 
heritage of Christian civilization, they have formu- 
lated, in terms of an independent philosophy of 
conduct, principles that are Christian in motive, but 
have usually forgotten or ignored their own sources. 
Influential modern ethical systems, up to the advent 
of Darwinism and the application of this theory to 
conduct, have invariably taken up some element of 
the moral common sense of a civilization that has 
absorbed the Christian point of view. Hence, the 
obvious reasonableness of the appeal that these 
systems make and the appearance they show of 
standing on their own feet, of being free from 
traditional presuppositions. The two most influ- 
ential ethical doctrines in recent times have been 
Utilitarianism in its several forms, and the doctrine 
of Self- Perfection, or Self- Realization, as the highest 
good or ultimate standard of conduct. Without the 
Christian principle that the true or ideal self is social 
in character, and that, hence, spiritual personality is 
attained by the life of service and fellowship, the 
doctrine of Self- Perfection, i.e. oi the full and harmo- 
nious development of the individual's capacities, as 
the End or Highest Good, becomes at best a refined 
and enlightened Egoism — a reflective pursuit of the 
maximum of individual culture and happiness with- 



THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS' TEACHING 1 73 

out regard to the welfare of others. What self- 
perfection means, in terms of the ethics of Jesus, has 
already been considered at length in this and the 
preceding chapters and need not detain us here. 

Utilitarianism, or universalistic Hedonism, the view 
which regards the greatest happiness of the greatest 
number,^ or the greatest pleasure for one's self and 
others taken together, i.e. the greatest attainable 
pleasure on the whole,^ as the Highest Good or 
standard of conduct, has no other independent 
psychological basis than the fact that men do desire 
pleasure and that, because of the inborn feeling of 
sympathy, the pleasure of others may he a pleasure 
for the individual. In strict logic this theory is not 
entitled to assert that there is any obligation on the 
part of the individual to seek higher pleasures at the 
expense of lower pleasures, or the pleasures of others 
at the expense of his own pleasure. The passage 
from the jact that a man seeks his own pleasure to 
the theory that every man ought to promote the 
pleasures of others or the greatest attainable pleasure 
of all seems easily made and makes a strong appeal 
to unreflecting common sense, because the teaching 
of Jesus as to mutual service, sympathy, and fellow- 
ship has become engrained in the common sense of 
men and has become part and parcel of the moral 
consciousness of the occidental world. 

In this sense, then, the doctrines of Utilitarianism 
have received acceptance and flourished because of 

^ J. S. Mill. 2 Henry Sidgwick. 



174 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

their parasitic character. Their altruistic and truly 
moral element is not derived from their psycholog- 
ical starting-point that pleasure is, as a fact, the end 
of man's endeavour. This view does not logically 
lead beyond an enlightened Egoism. The fact, if it 
be a fact (which I, for one, do not admit), that men 
always seek the greatest attainable pleasure for 
themselves, carries v^th it no obligation for me to 
seek any pleasure for other men at my own expense. 
If pleasure be the sole end of action, then, since I am 
a social being, an enlightened and prudential 
selfishness may lead me to promote the pleasures of 
other men in order to lighten social friction and by 
sympathy (if I am sympathetic) to enhance my own 
pleasure. But, in case of doubt or conflict between 
my immediate pleasure and the pleasure of even 
all other sentient beings, pleasure as a standard 
does not imply an obligation to any sacrifice on my 
part. 

It is not meant by this argument that there is no 
independent field for philosophical ethics, or that, 
outside of Jesus' teachings and the sphere of their 
historical influence, there has been no progress in 
ethical insight or moral practice. The ethical teach- 
ing of Jesus is of infinitely more value to man if it be 
in harmony with the general upward tendencies of 
human culture and serve to complete and to justify 
these tendencies, by revealing their ultimate founda- 
tions, than if this teaching were in opposition to, if it 
excluded or contravened, the principles of a human 



THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS' TEACHING 1 75 

morality worked out through the incalculable ages in 
which man has developed from the life of brute 
instinct to the life of rationality and sociaHty. 

With reference not only to the heart of Hebrew 
ethics, to Moses and the prophets, but as well with 
reference to the entire movement of moral and 
humane culture, it may be said of Jesus that he came 
not to destroy but to fulfil. That the moral founda- 
tions of ci\ilization find their highest interpretation 
and illumination, as well as motive power, in the 
teachings and work of Jesus and in the moral life 
that has historically issued from his life is the con- 
tention of the present work/ And if modern pyschol- 
og}- and philosophy discover the conditions of personal 
growth, in all that concerns the spirit of man, to be 
social, and the dynamic of social progress to be the 
birth of ideals in the rational spirit of free individual- 
ity, that is not robbing Jesus of his greatness. It 
is a contribution to his glory as pioneer and leader 
of the new humanity. 

But, on the other hand, I would insist that philo- 
sophical ethics is unfruitful unless it be based on the 
history of culture. Common-sense morality, as re- 
flected in feeling and opinion to-day, is a product of 
historical development. The history of civilization fur- 
nishes the materials for ethical reflection. An abstract 
theory that attempts to define, by process of pure 
logic and from formal premises, the highest good and 

^ For a good picture of the immediate moral effects of the gos- 
pel, see E. von Dobschutz, Christian Life in the Primitive Church. 



176 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

the meaning of ^drtue, without building upon the 
moral factors that have gone to the shaping of our 
ci\iHzation, is of little meaning and of no practical 
value. ^ And without doubt, from the standpoint of 
the history of western culture, the influence of Jesus 
and the impulses set going by him have been the 
most powerful ideals or conscious factors in forming 
our civilization on its moral side, just as Greek in- 
fluences have contributed most to purely intellectual 
progress. 

Other ethical doctrines have had their day and 
passed away. Each has doubtless given some light 
and had some influence toward the growth of 
humane civilization. But beside that of Jesus they 
all seem formal and powerless except for the sporadic 
few who can live by the dry light of reason ; or else 
where they have convincing and inspiring power they 
are parasitic. For example, Kant, the greatest 
moral philosopher of modem times, in his funda- 
mental insights, simply gives formal expression to 
various aspects of the ethics of Jesus Christ. His 
Kingdom of Ends, or Kingdom of Personalities, is 
Jesus' Kingdom of Heaven garbed in other phrases. 

The spirit of Christ still draws and instructs men 
v\dth power and not as the Scribes ; the power is that 
of a life that does not infringe on the freedom of our 
souls, that does not intimidate or impose an external 

1 In an article entitled " Ethics, Sociology, and Personality " in 
the Philosophical Review, Vol. XV., pp. 494 ff., I have developed 
this contention in more technical form. 



THE INFLUENCE OF JESUS' TEACHING 1 77 

compulsion, but that gently draws us to him ; humbles, 
cheers, and quickens us with a tenderness and sweet- 
ness that is yet strong with a strength that never 
wavers in the face of conflict, suffering, or doubt. 
Jesus speaks with authority in matters of conduct 
and life, but the authority is not the external con- 
straint of an institution or an organization, nor the 
dogmatism of a cut-and-dried system that chills the 
spirit and fetters the reason/ His moral authority 
is that of a perfect life, which, as we submit to its 
influences, arouses an answering witness in our 
hearts and wins our consent with the personal con- 
viction that, in the company of this Hfe, our person- 
ahties are coming to their own, are ever growing in 
harmony and peace, and in the fellowship of the Life 
Di\ane and Immortal ; the life in v/hich man truly 
finds himself at home in the cosmos because his soul 
has broken its local and temporal fetters and, 
through entrance upon a new humanity, is become 
one with God. 

In short, Jesus' own Hfe and personality is the 
ultimate source of his moral influence. He taught 

^ It is a strange and fateful blindness that still leads so-called 
offlcial representatives of Jesus Christ loudly to proclaim that there 
is no other way to know and serve the great Master of living, no 
way by which men's souls may be enlarged and quickened, no 
way for the weary and heavy-laden to gain peace from him, ex- 
cept through submission to the constraint of some formal institu- 
tion or cut-and-dried system. The Master's words are in place 
here, " God is not the God of the dead, but of the living " 
(Matt. 22 : 32; Mark 12 : 27). 
N 



178 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

in deed as well as in word. Besides his constant 
deeds of healing the body as well as the mind, by 
which he does reverence to the body so often despised 
by his would-be followers, and allows no place in his 
thought for an ascetic dualism, compare his many 
utterances and his frequent companying with the 
socially outcast and despised — with publican and 
harlot. "The Son of man is come to save that 
which was lost " (Matt. 18 : 11); "They that are 
whole need not a physician, but they that are sick " 
(Luke 5 : 31); ''He hath anointed me to preach 
the Gospel to the poor" (Luke 4 : 18), etc. 

The harmonious integrity of his character and the 
utterly unselfish and beneficent nature of his personal 
activity, both as teacher and healer, alone suffice to 
elevate Jesus' influence far above that of all other 
social reformers without recourse to an emphasis 
on the physically miraculous incidents of his career 
for evidence of his supremacy. Plato and Sir 
Thomas More sketched for us ideals of the social 
state; but Jesus left a concrete personal embodi- 
ment of the ideal man living out perfectly the life 
of social duty and of human fellowship in such a 
manner that men are thereby stimulated, not indeed 
to imitate him in a slavish and external fashion, but 
to work out their lives freely in his spirit. 



CHAPTER IX 

JESUS CHRIST AND OTHER FOUNDERS OF 
RELIGIONS 

(i) Personality and the History of Religion 

We have seen that the influence exerted by Jesus 
on man's ideas of God, and on their feeling of his 
relationship to the human family, is vitally and in- 
extricably bound up with his own personality. We 
have seen that it was not through systematic theo- 
logical definitions and proofs or chains of philo- 
sophical argument that Jesus wrought such a tre- 
mendous transformation in man's sense of the Divine. 
It was through the total and integral impress of his 
personality that Jesus wrought this great change in 
his own disciples' feelings in regard to God ; and it is 
by this same personal impress that he continues to 
have a vital influence on man's convictions concern- 
ing his own position in the universe and the attitude 
of the Universal Spirit toward him. 

We may now ask what is the secret of this personal 
influence ? Why should the influence of Jesus be so 
much more pervasive and profound than the reason- 
ings of philosophers and theologians ? This problem 
is bound up with the ultimate secret of personality, 

179 



l8o JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

and we cannot dissect the living personality into 
elements ; we cannot formulate it in general terms. 
We can only jeel in ourselves and note in others 
the influence of this vital, integral, personal life. It 
is life speaking to life, heart communing with heart, 
and indeed the influence and relationship is here the 
same in kind as that which obtains in the relation- 
ships of human persons. We can never give a 
generalized logical statement or exact analysis of 
the way in which an individual in whom we repose 
confidence, who awakens trust, admiration, and love, 
affects us. The direct relationship between living 
persons is the integral reaction of the soul known as 
faith. We may give reasons after the experience, we 
may enumerate the qualities of a person which make 
appeal to us. But, before we give these reasons 
or make this enumeration, we must first have had the 
living experience — must first have taken the attitude 
of faith or confidence called forth in us by the direct 
stimulus and attraction of another living spirit. 
Hence we cannot state in logical terms or express in 
a neat formula the influence of any worthy person- 
ality, much less of the personality of Jesus. 

Nevertheless a general consideration of the 
historical functions of personality will throw some 
light on the significance of Jesus' personality as a 
factor in the spiritual history of man. Human 
civilization is a social development. History, con- 
sidered as the evolution of man's entire nature, is the 
sphere of the growth of culture through the organiza* 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS l8l 

tion of society. In and through history and society 
man is transformed from a merely natural being — 
a creature governed by random impulse and merely 
sensuous desires — into a spiritual self, with power 
of rational self-control and self -direction. All the 
higher factors of culture (by which I mean the whole 
inner or spiritual side of civilization) are expressions 
of man's spiritual activity, in contradistinction to 
his merely sensuous or natural and animal life. I 
may remind the reader here that recent psychological 
studies have further borne out the view, which had al- 
ready found philosophical expression in the works of 
Herder, Kant, and, more especially, of Hegel, that man 
becomes aware of his own nature as a self-conscious 
spirit and reaHzes the potentiahties of this spiritual 
nature through participation in the common or social 
life of culture, and further, that the social culture of 
a given time or period is always the resultant of 
historical forces.^ 

Now, society is constituted by relations between 
persons. No society can be regarded as aHve and 
actual in which persons do not enter into vital re- 
lationships with one another. This is as true of the 
state as it is of a trades union, as true of the school as 
it is of the church, as true of the community as it is 
of the family. Of course the smaller the group, the 
more constant and intimate the relationships . Hence 

^ Such psychological studies are to be found in Josiah Royce's 
Studies of Good and Evil and J. M. Baldwin's Social and Ethical 
Interpretations of Mental Development. 



1 82 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

the relationships of individuals are much closer and 
more influential in the family than in the state. 

Society is the living matrix or culture-atmosphere 
of the spiritual life of man. But society undergoes 
a historical development and the various forms or 
aspects of the social-culture life of man, viz. the 
creations and spirit of art, in architecture, sculpture, 
painting, music, and poetry, the theories and applica- 
tions of scientific thought, the accepted moral ideas 
and the higher ethical ideals that influence a com- 
munity, all these aspects and influences in the social 
life of human culture are developed and made effec- 
tive through the action of leading persons. It is 
through personal influence and reaction that aes- 
thetic, scientific, and moral ideals prevail in the social 
life. It is chiefly through the influence of great 
personalities that existing scientific theories and 
political, social, aesthetic, and moral ideals are origi- 
nated, enforced, and transformed, that new ones 
arise and become efficient factors in the life of culture. 
It is sufficient in this connection to remind the reader 
of the influence of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, 
Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel in philosophy ; of Kepler, 
Newton, and Darwin in science: of Pericles, Julius 
Caesar, Frederick the Great, William Pitt, the elder. 
Napoleon I., etc., in politics; of Socrates and the 
Hebrew prophets, of Confucius and Luther and 
Savonarola, in the sphere of individual and social 
morality. The individual Personality is, in every 
sphere of man's acti^^ty, a great historical cause. 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS I S3 

And the ideas and ideals of the leading individuals, 
to become effective, must call forth reactions from the 
multitude, the moving mass of the social life. It is 
fashionable nowadays to say that a new move- 
ment is due to the general conditions of the time, 
that progress in science, social organization, art, and 
morals results from the convergence of general 
tendencies that in some mysterious way arise and 
spread over human society. But, in truth, these so- 
called general tendencies must exist and act in a 
number of living individuals if they are to mean 
anything. And great original movements never 
come to a head in human history until the creative 
personality is found, the leader, the discoverer, the 
revealer. 

All this is true in a preeminent degree in religion 
— the highest expression of man's life as a historical 
being. The most vital, enduring, and imiversal 
influences in religion have all irradiated from great 
personalities. What are known as the universal or 
ethical religions — those that make appeal to some 
ethical and spiritual principle or need that exists 
universally in mankind — have all been founded by 
great personahties. Judaism was founded by Moses 
and developed by the great prophets of Israel. 
Mohammedanism, devoid though it be of original 
elements, made its universal appeal through the in- 
fluence of its founder. The primal vitality of Bud- 
dhism lay mainly in the influence of Gotama 
Buddha. And this relation between the Personal 



184 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Founder and his historical work and influence is true 
in a supreme degree of Christianity. 

Of course, the personal founders of great religions 
have always taught and acted primarily with refer- 
ence to the religious conditions of their own time and 
people. There has been always a local and temporal 
element in their work. Since human personality 
is developed and lived out under specific social and 
historical conditions, the founder of a new religion 
must find a vital point of contact with the moral and 
rehgious traditions and social conditions of his o-v^m 
day and his own people. His universal appeal 
must find its way through a particular set of national 
and local circumstances, his eternal message must 
be revealed under temporal conditions. But these 
particular local and temporal conditions may be, and 
indeed always have been in the history of religion, 
typical of some phase or aspect of man's spiritual 
growth. And so, dealing in an original manner with 
typical or generally significant spiritual conditions of 
life, the ethical and religious teachings of Moses and 
the Hebrew prophets, of Mohammed and Buddha, 
have gained universal significance. 

One universally significant feature of the work of 
the personal founders of religion has been their 
simplification and unification of existing spiritual 
ideas. Buddha simplified the world-weary pessi- 
mistic pantheism, with its speculative negation of the 
individual, which underlay the confused religious 
and speculative ideas of the Hindu. Mohammed 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 1 85 

simplified the confused polytheism and spiritism of 
the Arabs. The Hebrew prophets gave grand and 
simple expression to the religious background and 
basis of social ethics. And, lastly, Jesus Christ, in 
freeing men from the burdensome and elaborate 
legahsm of post-exiHc Judaism, simphfied, while he 
deepened and sweetened, men's sense of their re- 
lationship to God. He freed the subHme ethical 
elements in Hebrew religion from their narrow 
national limitations and gave them universal expres- 
sion. And hence, in the religion of Jesus, the appeal 
is made to the individual, the single person is re- 
deemed and uplifted irrespective of race, commimity, 
and circumstances.^ 

The personal founder of a religion, then, speaks 
directly under the influence of and with reference to 
local and temporal historical conditions. But the 
test of his abiding influence lies in his personal 
revelation of the universal and eternal in the spiritual 
capacity and aspiration of man. 

(2) Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha in History 

At the present time there seems to be only one re- 
ligion, centring in a great historical personahty, that 
can claim, with any show of reason, to be a rival 
of Christianity, and that is Buddhism. Mohamme- 
danism may be left out of account. Although a 

^ I am indebted for suggestions in regard to the process of 
simplification in religious progress to W. Bousset, Das Wesen der 
Religion. 



1 86 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

universal or world -religion, it is not now, and ap- 
parently has never been, an originative and creative 
force in the spiritual progress of civilization. Able to 
unify and absorb scattered tribes into empires, able 
to assimilate a foreign culture, Mohammedan civili- 
zation lacks spontaneity and, except where stimu- 
lated by western influences, as in Egypt and India 
to-day, its development is soon arrested and decay 
sets in. The weakness and the power of Moham- 
medanism as a moral force both lie in its elaborated 
legalism. It sprang full armed from its founder as 
a fixed code of social ethics, law, or jurisprudence, 
and politics. It is a rigid, inelastic system that does 
not give free play and stimulus to the spirit of 
personality. Consequently, wide-reaching and be- 
neficent though its influence may have been, in 
uplifting races from utter barbarism and crude 
superstition, from fetichism and polytheism in 
religion, from disorder, confusion and rapine, into 
social order and some degree of stability and equity 
in the administration of justice, and into a worship 
of and submission to the will of one God that devel- 
ops self-reliance and self-respect in the believer, 
Mohammedanism everywhere has stopped at the 
estabhshment of fixed social order and political unity. 
It has never gone forward to create a high type of 
spiritual individualism in social life, morals, and 
religion. 

Nowhere on Mohammedan ground has the moral 
and legal equality of men and women been recog- 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 1 87 

nized. Nowhere has Islam originated a genuine 
democracy. Nowhere has it given birth to that full 
recognition of the freedom and worth of the individ- 
ual personality, which is the most valuable principle 
of western civilization. Consequently we find in 
Islam no great creative culture work like western 
science, free government, or social democracy. 
Islam for a time assimilated and imitated Greek 
science and philosophy, but it made no great original 
addition thereto. (It is not to be forgotten that the 
brilliant Caliphates of Bagdad and Cordova which 
transmitted Greek learning to the Christian Middle 
Ages were founded on tyranny and terrorism, as- 
sassination and oppression. Harun al Raschid de- 
stroyed to a man his great ministers, the Barmecides.) 
Mohammed, its founder, was undoubtedly an 
honest, earnest, and deeply religious man with many 
fine traits of character; affectionate, loyal to his 
friends, compassionate toward the poor, of great 
moral courage, etc. But his character deteriorated 
with worldly success. Whereas at Mecca, when under- 
going persecution, he said that religion should not be 
imposed by force, after he had become powerful at 
Medina he propagated his religion by the sword and 
gained his marvellous successes by a singular and 
shrewd intermingling of religious zeal with promises 
of earthly gains and sensuous delights for the 
warriors who survived the field of battle; and 
for those who perished, still greater bliss in Para- 
dise, in green valleys with rivers flowing through 



1 88 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

them and goodly numbers of houris to delight them.* 
Beginning with the proclamation of an ardent 
monotheism presumably derived from Jewish sources 
and well-fitted to uplift his countrymen from their 
base polytheism, Mohammed developed into a con- 
queror, statesman, and legislator. Herein Hes the 
secret at once of his success and failure. His 
empire is bound up with a particular and inferior 
phase of ci^dHzation. His ethics have many fine 
features in their insistence on justice to widow and 
orphans, simplicity of Hfe, almsgiving, patience, ab- 
stention from gambling, etc.; but they sanction 
the principle of retaliation of injuries and their 
conception of woman is low. Above all, the 
spiritual and the ceremonial are confused. Prayer 
and almsgiving are rigorous matters of ceremonial 
piety. In short, Mohammed's ethics are legalistic, 
formal, without inherent power of progress. Church 
and state are one, law and ceremony and right con- 
duct are not distinguished. Scope is not given for 
the development of inwardness, of a free and rational 
spiritual life. From Mohammed was hidden the 
secret of true ethical progress — the Divine Sonship 
of man grounded on God's infinite Love. Where 
law and spirit, the outer and the inner, legal institution 
and personality are confused, the mainspring of the 
higher movements of civilization is absent. Syed 

^ Modem Mohammedan rationalism explains these away as 
purely symbolical. But they are too frequently reiterated in the 
Koran and too consistent with the Prophet's practice to be so easily 
shelved. 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 1 89 

Ameer Ali says in his Life of Mohammed ^ that the 
"work of Jesus was left unfinished. It was reserved 
for another teacher to systematize the laws (itahcs 
mine) of moraHty" (p. 185). Herein this interesting 
advocate of Islam shows his entire misconception of 
the meaning of Jesus' work, a misconception which is 
indeed shared by some Christians. Jesus never aimed 
to give a system 0} laws for morality, much less for 
ceremonial piety. And, again, the same author says, 
in the fact of Mohammed's ''whole work being 
achieved during his lifetime lies his distinctive 
superiority over prophets, sages, and philosophers 
of other times and countries" (p. 150). On the 
contrary from the standpoint of the philosophy of 
historical progress, of the growth of culture in in- 
wardness and power through the movement of 
personality, this fact is precisely evidence of the vast 
inferiority of Mohammed's work to that of Jesus. 
The full accomplishment and the all-comprehensive- 
ness of his work mean, in Mohammed's case, a limit 
set on development, through the confusion of the local 
and temporal with that spirit in man which moves 
ever toward a higher perfection, i.e. Mohammedan- 
ism confused the personal and spiritual with the legal 
and external elements of civilization. 

Indeed the entire ethical and reHgious code of 
Mohammed seems but a recrudescence and applica- 
tion of Judaism with the greater prophetic elements 
left out. His ethical system falls below the teachings 

^ London, Williams and Norgate, 1873. 



190 JESUS CHMST AND CIVILIZATIOX 01 TC-DAY 

of Isaiah and Amos, Kosea and Jeremiah. His 
knowledge of Christianity was e\idently derived from 
very distorted sources ; indeed, some of the stories 
related about Jesus in the Koran are to be found in 
apocr}^hal gospels of the Infancy, notably the so- 
called first gospel of the Infancy, first translated 
into Enghsh by Henry Sike in 1697.^ 

The only remaining world-rehgion that oft'ers 
serious rivalry to Christianity is Buddhism. Not- 
\\^thstanding the central place occupied in the purer 
forms of Buddhism by the personality of Gotam.a 
Buddha, it is extremely difficult, o\N^ng to the lack 
in Hindu literature of that historical sense for in- 
di\dduality, for the unique lineaments, deeds, and 
fates of personalities which distinguishes western 
hterature, to construct from the maze of tradition 
a clear picture of the personality, work, and teach- 
ing of Gotama Buddha. Herman Oldenberg,^ has 
clearly shown, however, that such a personage must 
have existed. The traditions present, as Olden- 
berg says, in Gotama's case, a t}^e of ancient Bud- 
dhist life; now since this typical or unindiridual 
quality is at once so characteristic of Indian life, and, 
since the period between Buddha and the fixing of 
the tradition or the canon of Buddhist scriptures 

1 My chief authorities for ^Mohammedanism are the Koran, 
Sir William Mmr's Life of Mahomet (London, 1894), the above- 
mentioned work of Ameer Ali, Bosworth Smith's Mohammed, 
the articles in the EncyclopCBdia Britaymica, etc. 

2 Buddha, his Lije his Doctrine his Order, EngHsh translation, 
London, 1882. 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS I91 

was entirely deficient in minds great enough to give 
a new direction to the great movement, we are 
entitled to assume that we have at least a fairly 
accurate account of his work and teaching, although 
he may have had many striking traits which are lost 
through the absence in the Hindu mind of a feehng 
for the individual and historical. 

Moreover, when we approach the Buddhist 
tradition in this way, we find a new and fairly con- 
sistent ethical or practical teaching that is neverthe- 
less in harmony with the impersonal pantheism and 
abstract intellectualism so characteristic of pre- 
Buddhistic Hindu thought, i.e. of Brahmanism as it 
is found in the Vedas and Upanishads. Buddhism 
is a normal and legitimate product of Vedantic 
philosophy.^ Buddha's career began, like that of 

^ The fundamental thought of this philosophy is that the only 
reality is the world-soul (Brahma). Brahma is in every soul or 
dtman and the reality of the soul is not that of a separate individ- 
uality or personality. All that appears to separate the soul from 
Brahma is illusion. Brahma is beyond consciousness as this 
exists in man. Brahma is the indifference-point of self and world, 
the abstract unity of subject and object. In Brahma all separate 
selves and particular existences collapse into a featureless, formless, 
indescribable unity. The goal of human existence is to be 
merged in an all-one in which all distinctions are lost. It may 
not be amiss to remark here on the resemblance between this ul- 
timate and Absolute of ancient Hindu speculation and the Absolute 
of Spinoza, of Schelling (which Hegel described as shot out of a 
pistol) and the unknowable Reality of Herbert Spencer. We are 
often told that the Hindus are our masters in metaphysics. If 
the only logical goal of metaphysics be a denial of individuality^ 
which involves the assumption that man's history and the manifold 
activities of human culture are vain illusions, this is true. But 



192 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

the traditional Hindu mendicant monk who sought 
illumination and salvation, by withdrawal from the 
world, by renunciation of social ties, by ascetic prac- 
tices, and by meditation and speculation. Buddha's 
first departure from the traditional way was his 
discovery that neither by self-mortification nor pure 
speculation could one attain deliverance. The 
distinguishing characteristic of ancient Brahman- 
ism was that one attained the goal of salvation by 
an intellectual process that ended in complete ab- 
straction from concrete experience and individuality. 
This withdrawal from actualities into a realm of 



if metaphysics must be based on historical experience and draw 
its inspiration from the entire social and spiritual life of human 
culture, then the Hindus are emphatically not our masters. At the 
risk of evoking a sneer from the devotees of an abstract absolute, I 
venture to assert that genuine and indigenous western metaphysics, 
founded on the experiences of Greek and Christian civilization, and 
drawing its materials and inspiration from the development of 
free individuaUty and democracy, has nothing to learn from 
Hindu speculation. The whole future of western civilization 
demands the repudiation of the monastic intellectuahsm, the 
impersonal pantheism, of ancient India. (India to-day is being 
revived by the touch of another and alien life.) There can be no 
compromise between the democratic and historical philosophy 
of the West, carrying inductive science in its train, and the phi- 
losophy of an abstract absolute, whether presented in ancient or 
modem guise. Christianity and the democratic state stand or fall 
with the victory or defeat of a philosophy and theology based on 
inductive science and history. 

The leading authority for ancient Hindu philosophy is Paul 
Deussen, Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie, Band I. and II. 
Volume II., 'The Philosophy of the Upanishads,' is now translated 
into English, I believe. 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 1 93 

pure thought is characteristic, too, of the final goal 
of Buddha's teaching. But the latter has ethical 
elements of which previous Hindu reHgious thought 
was partly void, and it is the ethical and practical 
side that is of interest to us in comparison with the 
teaching of Jesus. I shall do no more here than 
make a very brief comparison. For the filling out of 
this outline the reader must consult the standard 
works in the history of religion. The resemblances 
between the career of Gotama Buddha and of Jesus 
Christ are so very obvious as to lie on the surface 
of comparative history. 

They both devote themselves to showing men a 
way of redemption from the ills of life. Through the 
teachings of both there runs a sharp contrast be- 
tween the merely worldly Hfe and the Hfe of spiritual 
self-control and peace. In the way of redemption 
laid down by both there is involved as the primary 
condition of salvation an overcoming of the world 
and of the lower self. 

Buddha, like Christ, demands purity of heart. 
Buddha teaches that the way to the cessation of 
suffering is the treading of the eightfold path of right 
belief, right aspiration, right conduct, right m^eans 
of livelihood, right endeavour, right memory, right 
desire. Buddha lays do^vn five rules binding on 
all adherents, monastic and lay alike. These rules 
are, (i) not to kill any Hving being, (2) not to take 
that which is not given, (3) to refrain from adultery, 
(4) to speak no untruth, (5) to abstain from intoxi- 



194 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

eating liquors. The emphasis on inward purity 
or rightness of desires and rightness of insight re- 
minds one sharply of Jesus' words, "Blessed are the 
pure in heart," and of that emphasis on inwardness 
and genuineness that characterize his whole teaching. 
But when we look deeper, we shall find the differ- 
ences still more striking than the resemblances. 
The basis of Buddha's teaching is absolute pessi- 
mism. Life is suffering and it is by an intellectual 
insight that man is to be redeemed, not from sin 
or selfishness, but from suffering. And the root of 
his doctrine of salvation lies in the four noble truths : 
(i) That suffering is the clinging to existence. 

(2) That the cause of suffering is desire or appetite. 

(3) That the cessation of suffering is to be gained 
through the abolition of desire. (4) That this aboli- 
tion is to be obtained through the eightfold path 
already mentioned. 

The secret of Buddha's personal influence con- 
sisted in his sympathy with human suffering, and his 
resolve to remove it. But his method of salvation 
is essentially negative. It consists in the absolute 
denial of individual existence, the negation of the 
individual or personal soul. All existence is tran- 
sitory and evil and, because of the endless chain of 
causal connection in the world, in which the indi- 
vidual soul is enmeshed, there can be no salvation 
except by the absolute abolition of the individual. 
Individuality is to be rooted out by the total aboHtion 
of desire. But Gotama accepts the Brahmanic 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 1 95 

doctrine of Samsara and of Karma according to 
which the individual is dependent in character and 
destiny on the deeds of former individuals, and is 
the reincarnation, not indeed, as Buddha conceives 
the doctrine, of a previous single individual, but of 
a group of qualities of previous individuals.^ Buddha 
is a nihilist in regard to the soul and to all individual- 
ity. There is no soul. "Constituent parts alone 
roll on" and the grasping of the constituent elements 
of being means the cessation of desire and of rebirth.^ 
The consideration of all elements of being as not an 
ego is one of the three starting-points of deliverance. 
The goal Nirvana, although hard to describe or 
conceive and presumably left purposely vague in 
Buddha's own teaching, is certainly the abolition 
of individuality. Nirvana is a state of desiring 
nothing and thinking nothing attained by renun- 
ciation and meditation. If it be not the negation 
of all being, it is certainly the negation of desire and 
activity, and it is difhcult to see what meaning, if 
any, can be attached to consciousness or spiritual 
being when the individual life has faded away in 

^ Rhys-Davids, Buddhism, Hihhert Lectures, Lect. III. 

^ H. C.Warren, Buddhism in Translation, pp. 333-334, 346 and 
377, Buddha is said to have repeatedly taught that the cause of 
rebirth was ignorance and the accompanying desire for individ- 
uahty. The " constituent parts" or "elements," Sankharas (trans- 
lated in German 'Gestalttcngen'), are the unceasing chain of causes 
and effects, or actions and consequences, in which an individual 
is enmeshed until he overcomes desire and gains insight into the 
impermanency of being. 



196 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

the absolute All which is itself devoid of positive 
quality or activity.^ 

Buddhism is essentially negative. It denies the 
reality of the individual spirit as well as of the world. 
Its basis is absolute pessimism. It compasses the 
redemption of the individual through stripping off 
individuality. The ego is freed from suffering by 
ceasing to be an ego, by denying the world and learn- 
ing to regard it as non-existent. Its ethics are monas- 
tic and speculative. Flight from the world is the 

^ Buddha seems, so far as one can judge from translations, to 
have decHned to decide or pronounce whether Nirvana or Nibbana 
was a state of being or non-being. But it seems clear that it is a 
total negation of personality. The soul "is only a heap of Sank- 
haras: here there is not a person." Oldenberg, op. ciL, p. 270. 
As, perhaps, an accommodation to the lay mind, Buddha does not 
categorically assert that Nirvana is the utter extinction of con- 
sciousness. Rhys-Davids (Buddhism, Hihoert Lectures for 1881, 
and American Lectures on Buddhism) gives it a positive char- 
acter. He calls it simply rest, calm, the peace that passeth 
understanding. I do not find that any other notable western 
scholar shares this view. Perhaps Oldenberg' s statement is 
the nearest approach we can make to the original meaning. 
*'For the Buddhist the words 'there is an uncreated' merely 
signify that the created can free himself from the curse of being 
created — there is a path from the world of the created out into 
dark endlessness. Does the path lead to a new existence ? Does 
it lead into the Nothing? The Buddhist creed rests in delicate 
equipoise bet\^^een the two. The longing of the heart that craves 
the eternal has not nothing, and yet the thought has not a 
something, which it might firmly grasp. . . . Farther off the 
idea of the endless, the eternal could not withdraw itself from be- 
lief than it has done here, where, like a gentle flutter on the point 
of merging in the Nothing, it threatens to evade the gaze " {op. cit. 
p. 284). 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 197 

goal and, although sympathy, helpfulness, and ten- 
derness are enjoined, it is in a spirit of comparative 
coldness. There is no flaming passion for these 
things such as breathes through the New Testa- 
ment; and, indeed, there could not be, since all 
active well-doing is in Buddhism only preparatory 
and preliminary to the higher stage of withdrawal 
from the world. The Bodhisatva, i.e. the seeker 
after Buddhaship, the *' Buddha-elect," will prac- 
tise these active virtues, but the Buddha who has 
attained the state of pure contemplation and peace 
is beyond them. The consequence of this attitude 
is the slight value attached to social relationships and 
moral acti\dties in the world of men. There is an 
absence of a positive feeling of obligation, a contempt 
for work, for woman, and for all the conditions of the 
earthly life.^ 

Work in the world of men and the morals that 
develop therefrom lie far out on the periphery, in 
the realm of matters that are well-nigh indifferent. 
The seeker after enlightenment leaves these morals 
behind him, since he passes far beyond the life with 
which they are concerned. Hence Buddhism as 
such is devoid of any principle of progress. It has 
no real history and no room for the positive growth 
of the individual person, in depth of life and width 
of social relationship. 

This negative relation of Buddhism to work in 

^ Edv. Lehmann in Chantepie de la Saussaye, Lehrhuch der 
Religionsgeschichie, Zweite auflage, Bd. II., p. 98. 



I go JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

the world, to social life and the manifold activities 
of ci\dHzation, accounts for the readiness with which, 
in the course of its spread among the peoples of the 
Far East, it accepted alien moral elements and 
adopted, without transforming, indigenous religious 
practices and beliefs; and hence, in consequence, 
for its failure to preserve its original and distinctive 
characteristics in the face of firmly entrenched na- 
tional ethical and religious systems. Buddhist 
India succumbed to Mohammedan onslaughts. 
Buddhism plays a very feeble role in Hindu culture 
and religion to-day. It has been reabsorbed into the 
speculative pantheism from which it originated. In 
the popular life it has vanished to give place to an 
animistic polytheism. Buddhism has almost totally 
lost its original features in the Lamaism of Thibet 
and even in Nepal, its original home.^ Almost all 
that remains is the world-weary monasticism. 
Nirvana fades into the distance or is treated as an 
illusion. Here is an elaborate hierarchy and cere- 
monial with gods galore and a material Heaven and 
Hell. In Ceylon and to a greater degree in Burma, 
if Mr. H. Fielding may be trusted,^ there is a strong 
leaven of original Buddhism. 

^ Northern Buddhism is based on the so-called Mahayana or 
Greater Vehicle, a complex blending of fantastic metaphysics and 
speculations upon all sorts of things with magical ceremonies and 
the apotheosis of Buddha. Buddha is made the head of a pantheon, 
and the dividing line between monks and laity becomes indistinct 
or disappears. 

2 The Soul of a People. 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 1 99 

The Buddhism of China/ with its worship of rehcs 
and idols, its goddess of mercy, Kwan-yin, the incar- 
nation of a Bodhisatva or Buddha-elect, Avalokites- 
vara by name ; its great god Amitabha or Amita, the 
eternal and infinitely glorious, who is lord of the west- 
ern paradise ; its material hell before which Dante's 
Inferno pales into mildness, would surely not be 
recognized at all by Gotama. Its repetition of 
magic formulas by which the gate of paradise is 
opened, the easy conditions for the use of this mas- 
ter-key, the strict book-keeping of the faithful with 
his gods, etc., etc.; all these things are the opposite 
of Gotama's method of self- salvation by sheer 
philosophical reflection and the extinction of 
desire. 

In China Buddhism, already far removed from 
its original simpHcity, came in contact with a long- 
estabhshed code of social ethics, whose fundamental 
feature was filial piety and whose whole system 
embraced only the five mundane social relationships 
of Emperor and subject, father and son, husband 
and wife, younger brother and elder brother, friend 
and friend ; a system admirably adapted to preserve 
in harmonious equipoise a social and political code 
of venerable antiquity and woven into the very life- 
blood of the people; but a system which gave no 
stimulus to progress and offered no scope to indi- 
viduality, since in it the individual person is swal- 

^ Compare S. Seal's Buddhism in China. Other references will 
be found in Chantepie Je la Saussaye, op. cit., Vol. II., p. 113 ff. 



200 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

lowed up in the social relations of family, clan, com- 
munity, and nation.^ In China, the family and even 
the clan and community are responsible for the mis- 
deeds of individual members. Higher officials are re- 
sponsible for the misdemeanours of lower officials, 
etc. In fact somebody else seems to be always re- 
sponsible. Confucianism is a system of purely 
utilitarian social and civic ethics. It formulates 
and codifies the principles of social life indigenous 
to an ancient and isolated civilization. It is clear, 
practical, prosaic, and unyielding.^ It sets up no 
ideal of a spiritual perfection that lies beyond the 
routine of moral custom and convention; it stirs 
up no feeling of transcendent personal responsi- 
bilities. It lacks entirely the element of aspiration 
and personal progress which comes only with the 
faith in an infinitely exalted and perfect Divine 
Being in whom resides that principle of personality 
of which the possibility is latent in the individual 
man. 

It is true that Lao-Tsze, contemporaneous with 
Confucius, taught the golden rule; and it is very 
significant, when taken in connection with his ele- 
vated ethical teaching, that Lao-Tsze emphasized 
the dependence of all things on a transcendent 
Reason; but this "Reason" or "Way" was abstract 
and impersonal. It did not stimulate the individual 

^Compare Williams, The Middle Kingdom; Douglas, Society 
in China; Smith, Chinese Characteristics, etc. 

2 Compare Douglas, Confucianism and Taoism, etc. 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 20I 

with a quickening and encouraging sense of kinship 
with the Perfect in the very midst of imperfection. 
Consequently, Lao-Tsze's teaching was devoid of 
any power of appeal to men in general. Modem 
Taoism has nothing in common with the teaching 
of the " old philosopher." It is a system of fetichism, 
magic, and di\anation. Buddhism, with its vague 
aspiration and its promise of a realm of eternal peace 
beyond the ordinary affairs of life in the world and 
society, with its promise of redemption into Nirvana, 
spread in China because it, in a measure, satisfied 
the inexpugnable longing for an ideal and trans- 
cendent realm of existence which one finds every- 
where in the human race. Those who were dis- 
satisfied with the outward show of things, with the 
conventional round of commonplace existence, and 
those who were weary of the struggle of life, sought 
satisfaction by a renunciation which carried them 
away from self and the world and promised absolute 
peace. But, since this peace was attained by com- 
plete denial of the world and withdrawal from the 
common activities of life, Buddhism is in China, 
as everywhere, at best an unhistorical and unsocial 
mysticism that is powerless to influence society at 
large and that initiates no new movements of civili- 
zation and gives no fresh impulses toward progress 
in humane culture. For such new impulses origi- 
nate always in the spirit of the individual working 
in society. Where the social and historical prin- 
ciple of personality is ignored, no constant progress 



202 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

is possible. And the growth of humane culture at 
its highest terms, i.e. where it ceases to be impelled 
merely by physical constraints, by the needs and 
appetites of the physical and biological order, de- 
pends on the feeling and conviction of the inherent 
and infinite significance of personality. 

A great and ancient empire like China, isolated 
from the forces which stir up and strengthen this 
sense of the infinite meaning of personality, and, by 
its inertia, resisting and absorbing the inundations of 
barbarians, in the natural course of events arrives 
at a reasonably stable social order. It develops the 
arts and industries so far as to minister to the de- 
mands of natural existence; and, then, stands still 
or retrogrades for want of a transcendent moral or 
spiritual impulse working in the individual, and 
through him on society.^ 

It is sometimes argued that Japan owes her great- 
ness to Buddhism because civiHzation came in with 
Buddhism from China. But it is forgotten that it 
was Buddhism plus Confucianism that brought the 
rudiments of civilization to Japan. The latter 
adopted Confucian social ethics. Under the in- 
fluence of the long period of feudalism in Japan 
loyalty was inserted as the keystone of conduct in the 

^ It is the well-nigh unanimous testimony of careful students of 
Chinese civilization that the administration of law in China is very 
corrupt, that intellectual and moral life there is wrapped in im- 
memorial stagnation; and no purely native impulses towards 
progress are discernible. 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 203 

ethics of the Samurai in the place of filial piety ^^ 
although the latter virtue was given almost equal 
prominence and, indeed, the absolute loyalty and 
obedience of the warrior to his Lord was a form of 
filial piety., 

Chinese Buddhism, entering Japan, found there 
a people in the stage of primitive civilization, indeed 
almost in barbarism. Already a fully organized 
and equipped ecclesiastical system which had en- 
tered China, bringing with it Hindu letters, art, and 
speculation, and which had further adopted into 
its own system the moral and social features of Chi- 
nese civilization, Buddhism introduced art and letters 
into Japan. It promoted the establishment of 
a literary language, developed an ecclesiastical 
architecture, fostered the love of nature, and, to some 
extent, mitigated the horrors of war and softened 
manners in a primitive people. But the activities 
of culture, planted and promoted in Japan by Chi- 
nese ecclesiastical Buddhism, were not, it is almost 
needless to say, the offspring of Buddhism in its 
original form. These were products of national 
genius adopted by Buddhism as it moved along 
through India, China, Corea, and Japan. An anal- 
ogy may be drawn between the course of Buddhism 



^Compare Nitobe, Bushido; Griffis, TJie Religions oj Japan; 
Okakura-Yoshisaburo, The Spirit oj Japan; Knox, Japanese 
Life in Town and Country and The Development oj Religion in 
Japan; Hearn, Japan, an Interpretation; Chamberlin, Things 
Japanese. 



204 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

as a civilizing agency and that of Christianity, 
which, in its course, adopted Greek and Roman 
culture and suffered great transformations in the 
process. But the analogy is very imperfect. Chris- 
tianity profoundly modified, indeed, one may say 
it gave an entirely new stamp to, western culture. 
This work of progressively transforming the bases 
of culture, Christianity still carries on and will con- 
tinue in the future. Not so with Buddhism. Enter- 
ing Japanese hfe and carrying with it the external 
apparatus of civilization, — letters and art, — it 
did not transform the heart of Japan. In a thou- 
sand ways it submitted to the control of the native 
impulses of the people. It entered political life and 
became for a considerable time a powerful social 
and even military influence. But it did not produce 
a radical ethical transformation. It did not build 
hospitals for human beings or organize charity. 
It did not greatly elevate the position of woman. It 
did not free the individual from the trammels of a 
communal life in which his independent worth and 
dignity were not recognized. Japanese feudalism and 
Samurai ethics are not pure and legitimate products 
of Buddhism. But if they were, that would not con- 
stitute a recommendation of Buddhism to the modem 
world. Much as one may admire the spirit of abso- 
lute loyalty and obedience to family, clan, nation, 
and emperor which is embodied in so many Japanese 
tales, that is not the spirit which makes for genuine 
human progress to-day. The future of humanity 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 205 

belongs to those for whom the individual soul is 
sacred beyond all political and social conventions 
and ties. Not until there is awakened in the spirit 
of man a sense of his infinite worth and of his in- 
finite responsibihty to God (these are but two aspects 
of the same truth) can civilization make sure and 
uninterrupted progress. The fuller and richer de- 
velopment of society depends on the development 
of the individual life. 

In Japan, Buddhism adopted the ancestral faith 

— the gods of Shinto — as avatars of Buddha. It 
split up into a multitude of sects, many of which seem 
to have been nothing more than forms of polytheistic 
animism and fetichism, while others have developed 
pantheistic and mystical tendencies such as we find 
in Buddhist sects in other countries.^ But I cannot 
find any sufficient evidence that the moral code of 
the Samurai owes much to Buddhism except an 
accentuation of that power of passive self-control 
and stoical endurance in the face of death which 
was indeed required by the supreme virtue of loyalty 

— a virtue that, on its negative side, involves a dis- 
regard for the worth of the individual person. For 
the few speculative and world-v/eary spirits there was 
an esoteric mysticism, for the many a crude medley 

^ Compare Grifns, Religions of Japan, and A. Lloyd, Develop- 
ments of Japanese Buddhism, in Proceedings of Asiatic Society of 
Japan, Vol. XXII., Pt. 3. I regret not to have been able to procure 
a copy of B. Nanjio's Twelve Japanese Buddhist Sects, a very 
important work on the subject. 



2o6 JESUS CHPaST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

of ancestral and spirit worship, magic, and divina- 
tion, with morals in part derived from Confucian- 
ism, and in part developed indigenously. There 
have occurred in the history of Japanese Buddhism 
reformatory movements of a lofty character, such as 
Shinshu, which teaches salvation by faith in Amida 
Buddha, emphasizes the value of family life, denies 
any especial value to the monastic life, allows the 
eating of meat, and forbids prayer for temporal bless- 
ings ; the Zen, or meditative sect, which lays all stress 
on contemplation; and that of Nichiren who 
preached in the thirteenth century, with fiery energy, 
an eclecticism which claimed to unify all previous 
teachings and to show that fervent faith, contem- 
plation, asceticism, etc., are all imperfect ways 
toward the Perfect Enlightenment in which is seen 
the identity of Buddha with all living beings/ 

It is evident that of these three great sects only the 
Zen ^ is akin to original Hindu Buddhism. The 
Shinshu is far removed therefrom. Enough has been 
said to illustrate the constant and great transfor- 
mations that Buddhism has undergone in the Far 
East. 

It is quite evident that in Japan Buddhism has 
not conquered Shinto and that it did not create the 

^ Mr. Lloyd thinks that the Tathagata of Original Enlighten- 
ment, i.e. the Perfect Buddha, is identical with God {op. cit., 
p. 442). If so, it is God pantheistically conceived. 

^ The Soto sub-sect of the Zen adds scholarship and research to 
contemplation. 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 207 

ethics of the Samurai class. Here, as in China, it bent 
to fit the national characteristics. Interesting though 
they be, Buddhist reform movements in Japan 
have seemingly been influential only as they have 
moved away from original Buddhism. The Zen 
system, with its auto-hypnotic contemplation of 
vacuity until the mind reaches a state of absolute 
self-annihilation of thought, perception, and will,^ 
reminds one strongly of Hindu quietism and mysti- 
cism. One Japanese writer ^ attributes great social 
and moral influence to this school, but probably 
greatly exaggerates on this point. I do not find that 
any other native or foreign writer of note agrees in 
attributing such a profound and widespread influence 
to the Zen sect. Its doctrine of contemplative 
"abstraction," or Dhyana, is certainly not provoca- 
tive of a positive activity in the moral relations of 
society. 

Recognizing the civilizing influences that Buddh- 
ism has exerted in the development of the Japanese, 
it still remains an open question how far the original 
features of Buddhism have been productive of a 
positive and progressive moralization of social 
activities. Japanese authorities are not themselves 
agreed as to the extent and depth of Buddhist in- 
fluence. One foreign writer ^ indeed asserts that 

* Okakura-Yoshisaburo, The Japanese Spirit, p, 74. 
^Mr. Okakura, op. cit. 

^ Professor G. W. Knox, Japanese Life in Town and Country, 
p. 65. 



2o8 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

''in all the sects . . . the noble eightfold path has 
been largely overgrown, and the ethical influence is 
inconsiderable." The most progressive sect, Shin- 
shu, is perhaps farthest removed from original 
Buddhism. Indeed it is strangely like a diluted 
form of evangelical protestantism. 

Popular Buddhism accommodates itself pretty 
completely to the temper, impulses, and customs of 
the people. Philosophical Buddhism runs into a 
vague subjective idealism, a dreamy pantheism and 
acosmism. The world and the self fade away into 
the Inane. This evanescence may bring peace of a 
kind, but it is not the kind of peace that a strong 
personality in touch with western life will crave.^ 

So far as modem Buddhism has been faithful to 
its original principles, then, it has developed a mo- 
nasticism for the world-weary, a passive unhistorical 
and impersonal mysticism for the contemplative 
spirits. Nowhere in its missionary career does it 
appear to have radically changed the character of 
a people or to have seriously modified an indigenous 
system of social ethics. It has contributed but little 
that is positive and creative to the activities of cul- 
ture. It is true we find a Buddhist art, in sculp- 
ture, architecture, etc., everywhere. But these are 
due chiefly to the natural artistic impulses of the 
various peoples, carried forward by organized Buddh- 
ism in its career as a missionary and institutional 

^ On the whole subject of Buddhism and Japanese Life, com- 
pare further S. L. Gulick, Evolution of the Japanese. 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 2O9 

religion. Buddhism has not developed experimen- 
tal science nor produced a great social movement 
anywhere. Although appealing to man, irrespec- 
tive of caste or training, it has never given rise to 
a genuine democracy. In truth it has never had a 
vigorous social message. By its very nature it could 
not be a mihtant and positive force in social morality. 
For, notwithstanding its denial of the reaHty of the 
individual, Buddhism is one-sidedly individualistic. 
Its aim is the expansion of self-consciousness to the 
point where it vanishes in the Absolute. But its 
conception of self -consciousness is abstract. The 
concrete and actual personality of man develops in 
and through the social life. Personality, in the west- 
ern and Christian sense, grows and is defined through 
the activities of social Hfe and culture. Individual 
Personality and Society move forward together. 
This thought is foreign to Buddhism. Just because 
it is a religion of abstract self-consciousness Buddhism 
fails to supply positive principles of social progress. 
Coming down from the heights of abstract contem- 
plation, it may adopt or compromise with the es- 
tablished morality of a civiHzed nation such as China ; 
but it introduces no new and great social principle 
such as the Christian principle of service. 

The Buddhist doctrine of Karma maintains that 
the fruits or effects of all actions are rigidly conserved 
in the ever changing process of existence. The 
character and conditions of a man's present life 
depend on the effects of past actions; not, indeed, 



2IO JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

of this man's past actions, but of past actions that 
conjointly cause him now to exist as this particular 
being. Karma is a kind of conservation, in the mass, 
of countless human actions. It is as if a biologist 
were to assert that heredity explained everything in 
human life. In truth, while this doctrine seems to 
approach modern science in teaching the universality 
of the law of cause and effect, it saps away the foun- 
dation of moral progress and paralyzes the individual 
will by teaching the ephemeral character of the pres- 
ent individual and his weakness in the face of the 
accumulated fruits of Karma now assembled in his 
character, and against which he can do little, if any- 
thing at all. This doctrine inspires resignation, not 
hope. It encourages flight from the world and its 
problems and renunciation of the seK and its desires. 
It weakens personal responsibility and leaves no 
room for initiative. If the individual soul be but a 
collocation of elements, it can have as an indi\ddual 
no great issues. No great achievements are open to 
it, and its hfe dwindles in importance to a vanish- 
ing speck on the surface of the relentless blind on- 
going of the fated elements of being. Being, ever 
impermanent, shifts its arrangements from moment 
to moment and indi\ddual souls arise in its ocean 
and fade away. To them comes no message, "My 
Father worketh hitherto and I work." There is 
only the blind ongoing of causes and effects. The 
order of Karma may be called a moral order by con- 
trast with the notion of a physical order indifferent 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 211 

to morality; but, where the individual soul is not 
itself a participant in cosmic issues, there is no moral 
or spiritual life in the Christian sense. 

Now that East and West are met together and the 
world is becoming one, it will have to choose between 
the fatalism of Karma and the freedom of Christian 
personality, i.e. to choose between Hindu and Buddh- 
istic pessimism and negation of progress and the 
Christian principles of hope, of progress, and in- 
extinguishable spiritual individuality. 

The one great moral contribution of Buddhism to 
the life of Asia has been the spread of the spirit of 
mercy or compassion. It has softened in some de- 
gree the heart of Asia. It has molhfied and restrained 
the cruelty and removed to some extent the callous 
indifference to human suffering of a continent 
where human Hfe is cheap and plentiful, and on this 
score Buddhism should be accorded its full meed 
of praise. But, even in this respect, the influence 
of Buddha is far behind that of Jesus.^ Buddha's 
gospel is one of egoistic self-redemption by reflection, 
Jesus' gospel one of redemption through vicarious 
suffering and social service. Institutions and ac- 
tivities for the relief of human suffering and distress 
in Buddhist Asia lag far behind those of Christian 
peoples. The extreme care of animals bestowed 
in Buddhist countries is not to the point, since 
this care results from the belief in the doctrine of 
transmigration. Mercy in Buddhism has a colour- 

^ Compare the Chinese indifference to suffering. 



212 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

less passive quality. In St. Paul, as in his Master 
and the genuine disciple everywhere, it is a positive 
passion.^ Christian love is positive and creative 
because it is founded on the faith in the value of the 
individual. 

In short, Buddhism reaches the spiritual by nega- 
tion of the natural; Jesus and his followers by trans- 
formation of the natural. 

Redemption in Buddhism means in its final stage 
withdrawal from the activities of social and cultural 
life ; redemption in the spirit of Jesus involves mak- 
ing these activities the means for the development 
of a spiritual personality. Buddhism is in essence 
unhistorical, unsocial; the teaching of Jesus is a 
positive transforming social force in the historical 
movement of humanity. 

It is one thing for esoteric students with a specu- 
lative bent to find, in the unhistorical mysticism of 
Buddhism, a satisfaction of their ovm contempla- 
tive and quietistic tendencies. It is quite another 
thing to find a positive doctrine which impels social 
progress and gives an ethical impetus and basis for 
the activities of civilization by developing at once a 
deeper sense of the worth and reality of the individual 
life and of the moral relationships of individuals 
toward one another. These two aspects of culture 
must grow together. Buddhism ignores the former 
and hence can do but Httle for the latter. Hence 
it has no great message for western civilization, 

^ The great Christian hymn of love is i Cor. 13. 



FOUNDERS OF RELIGIONS 213 

present and to come. The West may learn from 
the East the futiHty of a mad rush to get or to do 
something without first learning to possess one's 
inward self. The West may learn from the East 
the evils of a one-sided individualism and the little- 
ness of worldly aims which do not satisfy the crav- 
ings of the spirit. But the West does not need to 
go to the East for the foundation-principles of 
spiritual culture. For the future of the culture- 
life of humanity does not lie with a social paternalism 
or communism in which the personal life is swamped, 
but with a free society of free persons springing out 
of a faith in the progressive principle of personality 
as grounded in the nature of God. 

In truth the power of adaptation which Buddh- 
ism has shown seems to be due to its socially 
negative and unhistorical character; whereas the 
teachings of Jesus, notwithstanding the grievous 
perversions and misunderstandings from which 
they have again and again suffered, constitute a 
positive and impelling force in the work of civiliza- 
tion to-day. 

Indeed, the progressive spiritual forces resident 
in his teaching and his personality must be those of 
a character universal in its ethical and spiritual 
quahty — a character toward which human per- 
sonality grows as in the process of civilization it 
gains fuller scope and realization. 

Jesus shows the way to a positive world-transcend- 
ing life in place of the world-denying flight to the 



214 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Inane of Buddhism. He teaches men to attain a 
spiritual personality, salvation, and communion 
with the Highest, by overcoming the world, and 
through active cooperation and communion with 
their fellows. 



CHAPTER X 

THE FINAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PERSONALITY OF 
JESUS CHRIST 

The gospel of Jesus has again and again in the 
creative periods of Christian history proved its reno- 
vating power and displayed the inspiration and scope 
it gives to the personal life of man. Jesus' signifi- 
cance for the soul is constantly being rediscovered — 
by the mediaeval mystics/ at the Reformation, in the 
nineteenth century, etc., etc. In his vital and con- 
tinuing relation to the historical and spiritual de- 
velopment of man Jesus displays ever anew the ab- 
solute and permanent religious significance of his 
own personality. It has been the aim of this sketch 
to show in general terms that his principles and 
personality are still of vital and supreme import to 
the ethical problems of ci\dHzation, and that the prin- 
ciples of moral renovation and progress resident in 
his influence are pertinent to the higher personal life 
to-day. In the complete relevancy and timeliness 
of the ethical principles of Jesus to the spiritual 
problems of the individual and social life of to-day 
as of all times we have an empirical test of the worth 
of his teaching. 

And the perfect harmony of his ethical and spir- 

* Meister, Eckhart, John Tauler, The Theologia Germanica, etc. 
215 



2l6 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

itual teaching with his personal character — the 
absolute incarnation of his doctrine in his life and 
action — constitutes the eternal meaning of his his- 
torical appearance. Jesus the Christ is for us the ab- 
solute revelation of the spiritual meaning of human 
existence. In the light of his personality and deeds 
the ethical aspirations and spiritual longings of 
mankind receive an ultimate interpretation and are 
given historic and actual standing ground in the world 
of our historical experience. 

Hence Jesus is above all the revealer, the living 
incarnation of supreme spiritual values. For his 
revelation is not that of a book, not that of a cut and 
dried system, not that of an earthly organization. 
His revelation is the life and word and deed of an 
actual historic and yet eternally lining personality 
— a personaHty contemporaneous with every age 
and responsive to every need of the spirit — a per- 
sonality eternal in meaning, perennial in inspiration.^ 
Jesus is the absolute revealer of the spiritual destiny 
of man. For he reveals by embodying the secret 
heart of the universal Father in his attitude toward 
humanity. 

It does not fall within the plan of the present writ- 
ing to discuss the theological problems involved in 
the statement of the relationship of Jesus Christ to 
the eternal Father. But the consideration of the 
powerful, unique, and abiding influence which the 

^ It is a striking fact that every movement of religious reform 
in the West has claimed to go back to the historical Christ. 



PERSONALITY OF JESUS CHRIST 21 7 

historic personality of Jesus has exercised on the 
Hves of men and on their ethical conceptions of God, 
together with the central position which Jesus' 
own person has ever occupied in the ethical and 
religious life connected with his historic appearance 
and teaching, involve some inference as to his ul- 
timate relation to God. 

If this historic personality so powerfully and 
uniquely influences men's ideas about God and so 
vitalizes their feelings of relationship to the Divine, 
then Jesus must stand in a unique relation to God. 
Confining ourselves to the standpoint of ethical expe- 
rience and looking at the character and deeds of Jesus 
in the light of his teaching and of his social relation- 
ships, we must recognize that he was absolutely good. 
So far as human spiritual vision can penetrate Jesus 
was without spot or blemish — an utterly har- 
monious ethical personality. In him we find the 
absolute interpenetration of ideal and deed, of as- 
piration and resolve, and the final consequence or 
complete expression of this perfect integrity or har- 
mony of character or life is his absolute ethical oneness 
with God. His will, his thought, the whole set and 
tendency of his personaHty, are in complete unison 
with the will of the Heavenly Father whose messen- 
ger he is. 

As a matter of experience or personal insight, then, 
we must recognize that the ethical principles and the 
absolutely holy Hfe of Jesus reach their culminating 
interpretation in his absolute ethical or spiritual one- 



2l8 JESUS CHRIST AXD CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

ness of character with God. The will of Jesus is in 
complete harmony ^^dth the Father's will. The per- 
sonahty of Jesus is in its central ethical or spiritual 
attributes one with God. In this sense the ethics 
of Jesus involves the recognition that he is the Son 
of God — the perfect reaHzation of that Di\ine Son- 
ship which other men possess in promise and potency. 
All are sons of God and heirs of eternal life. But 
Jesus Christ, the perfect son, remains uniquely one 
v^dth God. 

In the first place Jesus possessed and gave utter- 
ance to an absolutely unique God-consciousness. 
He stood in a unique relation to the Heavenly 
Father by virtue of the absolute originality and cer- 
tainty of his knowledge of the Father's character. 
Relig-ous teachers before him had indeed spoken of 
God as the Father of men and even of love as a 
Divine attribute ; but with Jesus this Fatherhood of 
God has a new and \'i\^d meaning, and Love, as the 
Supreme attribute of the Father, gets an entirely 
new sweep and depth of appHcation. Jesus could 
not have taught this new doctrine of the Father 
with such power and authority if it had not been 
part and parcel of his o\\tl consciousness. One 
who dimly conceived in speculation or dream such 
a revolutionary doctrine w^ould not have enunciated 
it with such con\^ncing power. The mind of Jesus 
as presented to us in the gospels is, to say the least, 
one of extraordinary sanity, power, and balance; 
and this mind is pervaded through and through with 



PERSONALITY OF JESUS CHRIST 219 

its new knowledge of God. To have made this 
knowledge the pivotal point in his whole life and 
teaching, a mind so clear and strong as Jesus' must 
indeed have been fully conscious of the verity of that 
intuition of God. It is entirely consonant with the 
whole character of his thought and activity that 
Jesus was fully aware of his possession of this unique 
God-consciousness, a knowledge which he could 
indeed impart to others but which in its pristine pur- 
ity and power first belonged to him alone. When 
we take into account his entire career of teaching 
and work, nothing in the gospels rings truer than these 
words, ''No man knoweth the Son but the Father: 
neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, 
and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him" 
(Matt. 11:27). And the beautiful invitation and 
promise which follows, "Come unto me all ye that 
labour, and are heavy laden, and I wall give you 
rest" (Matt, ii : 28), would be entirely out of place 
without this clear and certain filial consciousness. 
That he should extend such an invitation and make 
such a promise in view of the worldly hazards and 
difficulties of discipleship implies, in a character so 
sane and integral as that of Jesus, a knowledge of 
God so clear and certain that it passes the limits of 
ordinary humanity. 

I have already said that so far as human eye can 
see, Jesus was morally perfect, an utterly harmonious 
ethical personality. His will was at all times com- 
pletely one with the Perfect Will of the Father. This, 



220 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

too, separates him from ordinary humanity. It is 
true, of course, that he himself does not separate his 
own moral will, as different in kind, from that which 
other men, as sons of God, may attain unto. To his 
disciples is given the command "to be perfect as 
your Father in Heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). 
It is "my Father" (Matt. 26: 39, Luke 22 129, etc.) 
and "your Father" (John 20:17). Purity and 
goodness are purity and goodness wherever found. 
St. Augustine's characterization of the virtues of the 
heathen as splendid vices is utterly opposed to 
the spirit of the Master who says, "Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my 
brethren, ye have done it unto me" (Matt. 25:40). 
"Many shall come from the East and West, and shall 
sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in 
the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 8:11, Luke 13 : 29). 
The difference in moral quality of will between 
Jesus and other good men, then, seems indeed a 
difference in degree, not in kind. But, if from candid 
study of that Life and Character we must say rever- 
ently and humbly — here alone do we find absolute 
harmony of a Human Will with the Will of God; 
here alone do we find Divine Perfection in a human 
life ; in view of the spiritual solitariness and perfec- 
tion of that character does not the difference in de- 
gree become a difference in kind ? If one finds only 
one case in history and experience of absolute ethical 
perfection, does not that constitute an isolated in- 
stance, a wholly unique personality? Is not, then, 



PERSONALITY OF JESUS CHRIST 221 

Jesus alone among the sons of men in this respect ? 
Against this interpretation there is quoted the saying 
*'Why callest thou me good? None is good, save 
one (that is) God " (Luke i8 : 19, Mark 10 : 7). But 
this was said to one not an intimate disciple, one who 
did not really know and sympathize with Jesus, 
probably one who came half in earnest, half in curi- 
osity, with flattery on his lips, "Good master." 
Over against this case may be set the sayings, '* One 
is your Master, even Christ" (Matt. 23:8, 10). 
"Which of you convinceth me of sin" (John 8:46), 
the passage referring to sin against the Son of Man 
(Matt. 12 : 31, 32, etc.). 

Moreover, it is a fallacy arising from the divided 
and imperfectly organized character of our lives that 
in matters that concern conduct, spirit, personality, 
we set knowledge over against will. We speak of 
knowing the good and doing the evil because our 
knowledge of good is not a vital, personal possession. 
The knowledge that Mars is inhabited or that the 
square root of two is an irrational number is at pres- 
ent of no practical moment to me. In these modem 
days of the rapid accumulation and easy diffusion 
of purely theoretical knowledge we are prone to 
assume that knowledge is and may remain entirely 
separate from will ; but, in truth, whatever knowledge 
be vitally assimilated must affect and find expres- 
sion in character. Vital knowledge, knowledge that 
is actually part and parcel of my being, must some- 
how get expression in will either by way of deed or 



222 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

restraint from deed. Personal and vital thinking 
is acting.^ 

In short, in the realm of inner realities, of the growth 
and activity of personal spirits, insight and action, 
knowledge and will, are two sides of the same process. 
Jesus' words, ''Blessed are the pure in heart {i.e. in 
will and feeling) for they shall see {i.e. know) God," 
are in harmony with a sound psychology. There- 
fore, applying his words to his own case, and, in 
the light of a sound psychology of personality which 
can recognize no ultimate divorce between knowledge 
and action, the moral perfection oj Jesus and his 
unique God-consciousness are but two aspects of the 
same spiritual process or reality. For the very 
unique insight or knowledge which he possessed was 
of a personal and ethical character, viz. knowledge of 
a Supreme Righteous and Loving Father; and to 
have possessed and imparted this knowledge, the 
Master must himself have been ethically perfect. 

The entire teaching and work of Jesus Christ rests 
on the same presupposition which has underlain 
the movement of European civilization toward 
religious, industrial, intellectual, and social freedom, 
tov/ard justice for all men, toward equality of 
opportunity and social democracy, toward, in 
short, freedom and scope for every individual, viz. 
that the lives of persons, realized in fellowship one 
with another, are the highest and worthiest realities 

* On the motor aspect of ideas, see J. Royce, Outlines of 
Psychology, passim. 



PERSONALITY OF JESUS CHRIST 223 

in the cosmos and that the principle of personaHty 
is the supreme and governing principle of things. 

The ethics of Jesus, the ethics of spiritual democ- 
racy, the ethics of personality — these are convertible 
terms. If the faith in the ultimate reality of persons 
which is the ethical basis of our civilization be justi- 
fied, then it is of the utmost moment to all our cultural 
and social activities that Jesus, who first clearly 
enunciated this faith and who is hence the moral 
leader of the vanguard of hum.anity, be — in the per- 
fection of knowledge of the Father and in the har- 
mony of his will with the supreme principle of things 
— indeed one with the Father. A God and Father 
of Persons revealed perfectly as to his spiritual 
nature and his purpose toward the race through 
a perfect man — faith in such is surely of the great- 
est moment to our civilization and its future. 

Whatever formula we may adopt to express or 
describe it, faith in the unique oneness of the Man, 
Jesus Christ, with God — the moral Ruler of the 
Cosmos — is so far from being an antiquated theo- 
logical abstraction or a coldly theoretical proposition 
that it has the most vital practical implications for 
society and civilization as well as for the individual 
soul. 

If objection be raised that ethical or spiritual one- 
ness with God, however unique, is not substantial 
or metaphysical identity with God, I should reply 
that, if one mean by metaphysical that which is 
ultimately real in the relations of persons, the perfect 



224 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

ethical unity is the truly metaphysical. A substan- 
tial or metaphysical oneness which is not grounded 
on the ethical harmony of personal will with personal 
will must be material or quasi-material. The no- 
tion of a personal unity, if made dependent on 
the conception of some immovable eternal substance, 
is reduced to mechanical or materialistic terms. 
If Christ's unity with the Father were of this descrip- 
tion, his personality must be absorbed or lost in that 
of the creative God. The highest and ultimate or 
most real type of unity is that of personal spirits — 
oneness of will, of heart, of character, and affection. 
It is in this sense, as the perfect embodiment or ex- 
pression of God's character, as the absolute harmony 
of a human will with the will of the Heavenly Father, 
that we may say on grounds of ethical and spiritual 
experience and by way of necessary inference from 
our own communion with him that Jesus is the Son 
of God. In this sense we may well say that the ethics 
of Jesus Christ culminates in his Divine Human 
Personality, and that he is the absolute norm or 
standard of the Spiritual Life, and the Perfect 
Revelation of God's character. 



Appendix. Ethics and Eschatology 

The synoptic gospels contain a large number 
of sayings in which Jesus proclaims the imminence 
of a crisis. The Kingdom of God shall come with 
power. The son of man shall appear in the clouds of 
heaven attended with legions of angels, etc. (See 
Matt. 16:27-28, 24:27-44, 26:64; Mark 13: 
8, 24-27, 14:62; Luke 12:40, 17:24-30, 21:27, 
21:36, 22:16-18, etc.) Now, on their face, these 
utterances seem to announce the approaching end of 
the present world. Mundane human society and its 
affairs are to be wound up by the act of God who will 
so inaugurate his own perfect reign, vindicate the 
claims of the Son of Man, and estabHsh him with 
supernatural power as judge of the world and ruler 
of the new order. These sayings are too prominent 
in the gospels to be easily disposed of either as 
legendary or figurative. 

Now, it may be said that the ethics of our Lord do 
not apply, and are indeed irrelevant, to the affairs of 
hfe in a world in which no sudden cataclysm of this 
nature has literally taken place, in a world in which 
the ordinary concerns of life and industrial, artistic, 
scientific, and political activities have gone forward 
steadily since the days of their utterance. It may be 
claimed that Jesus Christ in his teaching takes no 

Q 225 



226 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

account of family life, no account of art or industry or 
state, because he expected all these things to cease 
very soon. It is urged that the hard sayings — ''Sell 
all that thou hast" (Luke i8 : 22, Matt. 19 : 21, etc.), 
"Let the dead bury their dead " (Matt. 8:22), " If any 
man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, 
and wife and children, yea and his own life also, he 
cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14: 26), etc. — clearly 
are spoken in the expectation of the immediate or 
speedy ending of the present earthly order and of the 
miraculous establishment of the Kingdom of God or 
perfect reign of righteousness. This Kingdom, 
it may be urged, has nothing in common with the 
earthly lot of men as we live and know it. "They 
neither marry nor are given in marriage " (Matt. 
22:30, etc.). Hence, it is said, to talk about the 
application of the ethics of Christ to the activities of 
human civilization and the affairs of actual human 
society is to miss the entire issue of his teaching. 
Since this Kingdom has not come, we not only do not, 
but we cannot, live by his ethical principles. This 
is a serious charge. If it be sustained, the church 
and historical Christianity have been largely mis- 
taken, the teachings of the Master have no bearing 
on the life of humane culture, and either we must 
leave the world or live in it in opposition to his spirit. 
A way out of the difficulty may be sought by 
denying entirely the authenticity of these apocalyptic 
and eschatological sayings. A support to this way 
is supplied by the contention that Jesus Christ did not 



APPENDIX 227 

call himself the Son of Man or claim to be the Mes- 
siah. I have already dealt briefly with these two 
points, but a few words may be added here. 

The obvious and only satisfactory explanation of 
his trial and condemnation is that Jesus claimed to be 
the true Messiah ; that he made his entry into Jerusa- 
lem and drove out the money-changers and preached 
in the temple under that claim. He was condemned 
and crucified at the instance of Jewish ecclesiastics 
as a false Messiah. He had run counter to their 
preconceived picture and hope of the Messiah and it 
was easy to give colour to the only charge that 
would strongly appeal to a Roman governor, viz. 
that Jesus was a stirrer-up of sedition. 

Without the presupposition of a Messianic con- 
sciousness on Jesus' part it is impossible to account 
for the question at Caesarea Phillipi with Peter's 
answer, "Thou art the Christ." And this narrative 
bears upon it the stamp of genuineness. Taken in its 
setting in the development of the Master's mission, 
this story has a uniqueness and verisimilitude that 
make it well-nigh inconceivable that it should have 
arisen without foundation in fact. Moreover, the 
narrative of the temptation, in Matt. 4 : i-io and 
Luke 4 : 1-13, is wholly inexplicable without 
Jesus' belief in his own Messiahship. Such a story 
could not have originated in the circle of disciples 
after his death. The growing faith of the primitive 
church in his supremacy over the world and in the 



228 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Divine character of his Mission do not account for its 
presence in the gospels. This faith would rather 
have tended to eHminate or slur over the idea of 
temptation just as it would tend to eliminate such 
utterances as "None is good, save One, that is God, " 
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 
etc. 

The story of the temptation is the record, in imag- 
inative and pictorial setting, of three stages or phases 
of the inner conflict in the Master's spirit with the 
popular Messianic ideal of his ovm time and people. 
Admit his Messianic consciousness as becoming 
clear and dominating his spirit from the baptism by 
John and the meaning of the story of the temptation 
is clear. Full of the consciousness of his tran- 
scendent mission and of his correspondingly great 
powers, the -first temptation, following the order in 
Luke, viz. wilderness, mountain, city, is that he shall 
claim exemption from the physical weakness and 
disabilities of ordinary humanity; the second^ that, 
for the sake of a more rapid and easy acquisition of 
adherents, of a general acceptance of his message and 
allegiance to his person, he shall compromise with the 
powers that be, — with those forces in the nation 
which he regards as Satanic — the hypocritical 
legalists, Scribes and Pharisees, perhaps also with 
the Pagan forces of Rome; the third, that he shall 
demand from God a signal proof of his authority 
as messenger from on high by way of a miraculous 
demonstration of care for the person of the Messiah. 



APPENDIX 229 

If Jesus, from the outset of his public career, be- 
lieved himself to be the Messiah and yet could not at 
once reveal his claim, by reason of the inflammable 
state of popular feeling and expectation on this sub- 
ject, since to evoke a premature popular movement 
would be to invite armed rebellion against Rome and 
to destroy utterly the spiritual and lasting character 
of his mission, it is quite obvious why he should 
employ a self-designation whose prophetic associa- 
tions and spiritual meaning in Daniel 7 : 13 and in 
certain Psalms, notably Ps. 2 and 8, were at once 
sufficiently exalted and sufficiently vague to make it 
a fit vehicle of expression for the spiritual character 
and lofty nature of his mission without revealing gen- 
erally and immediately his Messianic claims. Such 
a term was the "Son of Man." Its meaning was 
sufficiently vague and its associations lofty enough 
to enable Jesus, by use of it and by the illu- 
minating context of his own teachings and deeds, 
to pour into the phrase a new, rich, and unique 
content.^ 

^ The term. " son of man " or " the man " in Daniel 7:13 does 
not seem to mean a definite individual but to stand for Israel; 
whereas in later Jewish apocalyptics it means a heavenly, pre- 
existent being. In the Book of Enoch (Chaps. 37-70) he is a 
preexistent being who comes with power and as judge to estab- 
lish the new era. If the Book of Enoch be of pre-Christian date 
it is quite possible that the picture of the Son of Man therein pre- 
sented was familiar to our Lord and to a small circle for which it 
would have a Messianic connotation. This is a suggestion of 
Sanday's in his Outlines of the Life of Christ. See Charles' 
translation of the Book of Enoch, especially Chaps. 46 and 48. 



230 JESUS CHRIST AKD CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Sometimes when he uses it, this phrase expresses 
his utter humanity, his sohdarity with the race. 
Sometimes again it emphasizes the unique mean- 
ing of his mission as founder of a new order. 
And, again, in the latter and bitter days it bears the 
weight of his confident faith that the Heavenly Father 
will in the time to come \dndicate and seal with in- 
disputable authority and power the mission of the 
Son. This is the meaning of such sayings as "I 
will not drink from henceforth of the fruit of the vine, 
until the Kingdom of God shall come" (Luke 
22:18). Compare Mark 14:25. 

If Jesus held himself to be the present founder 
of the Kingdom and the future Messiah, and be- 
heved that God would take care of that Kingdom 
by signal and direct exercise of power, then there 
is no passage in the s\T2optics which offers any seri- 
ous difficulty in the way of the assumption that 
"the Son of Man" is a self -designation of our Lord, 
which points toward his future triumph. Only thus 
do such expressions, as "No man knoweth the Son 
but the Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father, 
save the Son" (Matt. 11:27) become intelligible. 
See also Matt. 17:5, 21:37 f. ; Mark 9:7; Luke 
12: 8-10,17:30, 18:8; John 6:62, 13:31, etc. 
There is no good evidence that the title "Son of 
Man" was a Messianic designation widely current in 
our Lord's day.^ He probably took the notion from 

^ On this point see Dalman, TJie Words of Jesus, pp. 234 S., and 
Driver's article " Son of Man " in Hastings' Dictionary oj the Bible. 



APPENDIX 231 

Daniel ^ and the psalms. But whatever his literary 
source, his supreme greatness in other respects 
warrants the assumption that, in his usage of this 
title to designate himself, he was bound by no tradi- 
tion. He filled the title "Son of Man" with the con- 
tent of the Isaianic "suffering servant of Jahweh" 
and, through his teaching and deeds, fused into an 
incomparable synthesis the notions of a Heaven-sent 
Messiah, of a Son of Man human in all respects, 
and of the "suffering servant" who by his lowhness, 
meekness, and suffering serves God and serves man.' 
If, then, the term " Son of Man " were not a popular 
Messianic title in the days of Christ, and if almost 
until the end of his life he must carry alone in his 
bosom the tremendous burden of a Messiahship 
almost at all points antithetical to that current in his 
day as a secret only to be revealed when he chose to 
face the last ine\itable crisis, it is surely reasonable 

^ It is quite possible that Jesus was familiar with the concep- 
tion of the heavenly, preexistent " Son of Man" of the similitudes 
of the Book of Enoch and that this character influenced his choice of 
the term, although this assumption is hardly necessary to account 
for his use of the term. Bousset points out that this latter con- 
ception of the Messias was entirely foreign to the older prophetic 
and more characteristically Jewish ideas in which Messiah was an 
earthly king of Davidic lineage, not a heavenly and preexistent 
visitant. As to the precise source of the latter notion we are in 
the dark. It appears full-fledged in the Book of Enoch. See 
Bousset, Religion des Jndenthums im neutestamentlichen Zeitalter, 
pp. 304 ff. ; article "Development of Doctrine in the Apocrypha" 
in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, Yol. Y. Further references 
will be found in the latter work, 

^ Isaiah 53, etc. 



232 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

to maintain that, believing as he did that God would 
vindicate him as Messiah and conscious from his 
baptism of his unique mission and position, Jesus 
would and could use, in the unique sense it must have 
had for his own consciousness, this plastic term "the 
Son of Man.' ' ^ For this term both concealed and re- 
vealed his inner consciousness of his mission and posi- 
tion in relation to his Heavenly Father and his people. 
He used it in the third person because it was typical 
and anticipatory of the full declaration of his Messiah- 
ship and of God's future vindication of his work. 
It comprehended both the inner secret of his unique- 
ness, the greatness of his claims as Saviour and 
Judge and his full fellowship with man. 

So understood the Son of Man is the future Mes- 
siah, the inaugurator of the long-expected Kingdom 
of God. What then is to be said in regard to the 
imagery in which the coming of this Kingdom is 
depicted? That this imagery was derived from 
current Jewish apocalyptic sources is, of course, 
very obvious. That Jesus himself made use to 
some extent of these images is a reasonable assump- 
tion; that his words thereon, in transmission and 
writing-down, were further coloured by the presence 
of this apocalyptic element in the minds of his 
disciples is an equally fair assumption. To ap- 
preciate the apocalyptic element in the gospels one 

^ The strongest argument against this view of the term " Son 
of Man " is that of Schmidt, The Prophet of Nazareth, Chap. V. 



APPENDIX 233 

must consider carefully the ideas and beliefs of cur- 
rent Judaism. We must remember that the current 
Jewish conception of the expected Kingdom was 
not absolutely fixed and definite. It was plastic and 
indefinite.^ It contained many elements, spiritual 
and political, religious and worldly, etc. Its apoca- 
lyptic framework was not stereotyped. It prob- 
ably contained elements derived from Daniel and 
Ezekiel, later apocalyptic features like those of 
the Book of Enoch, the Psalter of Solomon, the 
Testament of the Patriarchs, etc. The older 
prophetic notion of the Kingdom was that of a 
political state with its capital at Jerusalem and the 
Messiah or anointed one of Davidic lineage as its 
first king. 

Alongside of this notion there grew into promi- 
nence, perhaps shortly before the time of Christ, the 
notion of an entirely transcendent and other-worldly 
Kingdom or rule of God. This latter Kingdom 
was to be ushered in with great signs and wonders, 
in short with apocalyptic displays of Divine Power. 
Its coming was the close of one age, or aeon, and the 
beginning of another — the age or, sometimes, the 
timeless aeon of Divine Righteousness and Peace. 
This latter conception of the Kingdom, with its 
metaphysical and transcendent elements, was less 
political and more individuahstic and spiritual than 
the older one; less social, but more directly ethical 

^ The study of the prophets and the post-exilic and apocrv-phal 
waitings displays fully the plastic character of this conception. 



234 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

and religious in colouring ^ ; less Jewish and more uni- 
versal. The form given to it Vv^as, presumably, in- 
fluenced by Persian ideas. (The Persian faith, 
Mazdaism, too, looked for a Messiah, Saoshyant, 
vv'ho should inaugurate the absolute reign of Ahura- 
I\Iazda.) The affinity of Jesus' conception of the 
Kingdom was with the transcendent and ethical 
elements just mentioned. He stood always in sharp 
opposition to political, narrowly Jewish, and this- 
worldly ideas of the reign of Di\ine righteousness. 
We may suppose that Jesus took up and filled 
with new ethical and religious content some of the 
current conceptions of an anticipated cEon or time to 
come, in which God would judge and save the world 
through Messiah ; separating the e\'il from the good, 
filling the latter with knowledge of Himself and of his 
peace and righteousness. But it is always to be 
borne in mind that, whatever notions the Master 
took up, and from whatever source, these were 
transformed and filled ^dth a new ethical and 
spiritual dynamic and meaning by the vitahzing 
touch of his spirit. What separates Jesus' references 
to the full coming of the new Kingdom or aeon from 
all contemporary notions — Jewish, Persian, or other- 
wise — is the unique content of faith and insight which 
breathes in his utterances and the d\Tiamic spiritual 
energ}^ which makes these utterances the determining 

^ See Bousset, op. cit., Kap. ?QI., esp. pp. 255-266 and Kap. 
XIII., esp. pp. 297-308 and articles" Eschatology" in Cheyne's 
Encyclopedia Bihlica and Hastings' Dictioymry of the Bible. 



APPENDIX 235 

factors in a marvellous spiritual transformation of 
the face of history. To-day we only study Jewish 
apocalyptics or Persian ideas to gain some reflected 
light on conceptions that were unified in the alembic 
of a great spirit in the history of man, through whose 
power alone these conceptions have survived and 
have vital interest for us. 

Doubtless the writers of the synoptic records, who 
had grown up and were steeped in the atmosphere of 
Jewish Messianic hopes and apocalyptic eschato- 
logical ideas, unconsciously coloured many of our 
Lord's saying with more vivid hues of the new seon. 
Perhaps such sayings as ''Verily I say unto you, 
there be some of them that stand here, which shall 
in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of Man 
coming in his Kingdom" (Matt. 16 : 28 ; Mark 9:1; 
Luke 9:27; compare Matt. 10:23) rest on a 
misapprehension as to meaning and context of an 
utterance of the Master in which he may have 
promised to those who accepted and stood by him 
in the great crisis, that they were thereby already 
passed from death into life and, whatever might 
happen to their bodies, their souls were secure in the 
heavenly or spiritual order which transcended 
the present earthly state. The famous saying, 
''The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation : 
neither shall one say, Lo here ! or There ! for lo, 
the Kingdom of God is within (or in the midst of) 
you" (Luke 17 : 20, 21), bears out this interpretation. 



236 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Noteworthy is the fact that Jesus always responded 
to those who asked for the immediate coming of the 
Kingdom in all its fulness not by any declaration 
as to the precise time or manner of its appear- 
ance, but by an exhortation to earnest endeavour 
and unceasing watchfulness. Compare Luke 19: 
11-28, etc. Perhaps, too, such passages as Mark 
13:26 and Luke 21:27, "And then shall they see 
the Son of Man coming in clouds mth great power 
and glory," with their contexts so \d\ddly descriptive 
of tribulation and suffering, of social confusion and 
natural catastrophes, are apocalyptic accretions or 
applications of current Jewish apocalyptic sayings, 
springing up in the disciples' minds from misunder- 
stood sa}TQgs of the Master. Perhaps such pas- 
sages as Matt. 24: 27-30 took their present form in 
some such manner. But when due allowance has 
been made for the sources of the imagery and 
details as to times and signs in all such passages, 
it remains unquestionable that these passages must 
rest on genuine sayings in which Jesus Christ him- 
self announced his confidence in a coming judgment 
and a coming vindication of the truth of his message 
and of his inescapable claim to the allegiance of men. 
The prominence of the eschatological element in the 
gospels is inexplicable unless our Lord himself 
regarded the fuller and explicit advent of the 
Kingdom as a crisis which transcended all worldly 
affairs, unless he held that its coming would be 
sudden and with power and that he himself would be 



APPENDIX 237 

recognized as its herald or Messiah. He looked to 
the Heavenly Father, on whom he always reHed, for 
the installation of this power, and because he 
identified his own will so completely with that of the 
Father, he saw in the full appearance of the King- 
dom the final fulfilment of his work and the explicit 
recognition of his person. Do these considerations 
involve the admission that his ethical teachings are 
irrelevant to the life of man in human society now 
and throughout the intervening years since his day 
on earth? This question has been in chief part 
answered by the whole argument of the previous 
work. If there is in the gospels a body of teaching 
of obvious pertinency to the problems of the common 
human life, then Jesus' gospel is no mere system of 
eschatology, although the eschatological element 
is a prominent feature of it. Moreover, is not an 
eschatological element bound up with every deep 
moral and reHgious faith? A great moral and 
spiritual leader must beHeve in the fulfilment of 
his aims. Without the faith that God — the Ruler 
of all things — is with him his teaching would have 
no moral and reHgious dynamic. It would fall flat 
as a mere philosopheme. The belief in the coming 
of his Kingdom with power and the confident procla- 
mation of the fulfilment of his aims and the con- 
summation of his work was inevitable. This faith 
in the ultimate cosmic victory of the spiritual order 
which he announces and inaugurates is an essential 
and inalienable element of Jesus' personal con- 
sciousness. 



238 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

Must it not be always so ? Does not a vital moral 
faith always involve the confidence in the triumph 
of its principles? Would not a moral principle 
however exalted, a spiritual insight however penetrat- 
ing, fall nerveless to the ground unless sustained and 
borne aloft on the wings of a burning certainty of 
ultimate victory? Even Kant, cool philosopher 
though he was, looked forward with faith to the full 
realization of his moral ideas through the establish- 
ment of everlasting peace on earth. Faith in its 
ultimate victory and perfect fulfilment is of the very 
life-blood of ethical and spiritual conviction. 

We may, and indeed must, interpret this consum- 
mation in other terms and with other imagery than 
those of the gospels; but if we accept the moral 
teaching of Christ with its tremendous issues for 
human life we must, too, assume and heartily believe 
in a consummation, a final goal w^hich shall be reached 
and which is ever being reached through crises in 
the individual Hfe and in history. 

The ruthless earnestness, the heroic seriousness, 
with which men are challenged to seek first the 
Kingdom of God and its righteousness, to sell all they 
have, to let the dead bury their dead, to hate even 
father and mother, arise from a Divine Soul that 
calls the soul of man to awake from its lethargy, calls 
it out of the stagnant shallows of mere custom and 
worldly convention to embark on the deeps of the 
spiritual voyage of self-discovery, calls the soul at all 
costs and at all hazards to find itself in God. Sud- 



APPENDIX 239 

denly and with power the Kingdom of God — the 
realm of the spiritual order — comes to him who 
manfully faces the tremendous and fateful issues of 
his spiritual being, who puts aside all hindrances 
that he may seek and find the absolute righteousness 
and joy of the Heavenly Father. Yes, Jesus did 
demand that men should pause and even turn away 
from the ordinary cares and affairs of life. He saw 
that these things often keep a man from finding his 
own soul.^ The obligations laid upon the soul of 
man by him often seem superhuman and beyond the 
power of ordinary humanity. To turn away from 
or stop short in the career of the world, to face inner 
conflict, to make heroic choices and sacrifices, to 
seek -first the Kingdom — these things Jesus de- 
mands of all. But it is because there resides in man 
the possibility of a new humanity, — of a spiritual 
''superman," who is born not of caprice and wilful 
assertion but of absolute devotion to service, of 
unstinted forgiveness and love for man and God, that 
Jesus makes these heroic demands. The Kingdom 
of God comes with power wherever in the individual 
there is bom, through the heroic deeds of spiritual 
faith, the " superhuman" consciousness of the absolute 
supremacy of Jesus' ideal and of its power to lift 
humanity up to higher levels of insight, of spiritual 
life and deed. 

Those who stress the eschatological element in the 

* He spoke directly to disciples who must face with him the 
great crisis. 



240 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

teaching of Jesus often exaggerate it.^ But, to 
whomsoever is in earnest with that teaching and that 
life, it becomes a necessity of faith. His supremacy 
as a spiritual master means that he has a cosmic 
authority and that his principles can and will pre- 
vail. 

And may one not even venture to suggest from this 
standpoint of faith that, since the ethical princi- 
ples of Jesus are supremely valid, he is judge 
not only of the indi\ddual life but of the world? 
May it not be said that, in the terrible social and 
moral crises, through which the world makes pro- 
gress slowly, his Kingdom ever comes with power? 
In every fresh social crisis, through the welter of 
suffering and bloodshed, of rapine and flame, 
there sounds in clearer tones the voice of moral 
justice ; and when the smoke has cleared above the 
ruins, men know that had the principles of Jesus been 

^E.g. J. Weiss in his Die Lehre vom Reiche Gottes so one- 
sidedly emphasizes the eschatological element that he is driven to 
assert that there is nothing novel in the ethics of Christ but that 
the source of his influence was just the faith-enkindling power of a 
supreme religious genius. From this standpoint Jesus was no teacher 
and the specific import of his parables and sayings are purely 
eschatological. They contain no social gospel and the individual 
is enjoined to practise neighbour-love, etc., simply to save himself, at 
the impending final judgment, into the reign of perfect blessedness. 
This view is a great and very one-sided exaggeration. A similar 
view is held in somewhat less one-sided form by V/. Bousset, Das 
Reich Gottes in der Predigt Jesu, in Theologische Rundschau, Vol. V., 
pp. 397-407 and 437-449. On this and cognate questions a tem- 
perate and sound attitude is that of W. Sanday in his Outlines of 
tlie Life of Christ. 



APPENDIX 241 

followed, this crisis would not have come. Every 
great historical struggle is a step on the road toward 
the fuller coming of his Kingdom. The miseries 
of the Middle Ages, the Thirty Years' War, the 
French Revolution, the present crisis in Russia, 
are salient instances in social life of the working out of 
moral judgments — crises through which the King- 
dom of Righteousness comes with terrible power. If 
mankind will not otherwise hearken, then they must 
be so judged. The reign of righteousness must 
come with suffering and judgment before it can 
blossom in love and peace. 

The superficial acceptance of the theory of evolu- 
tion has blinded the eyes of this generation to the 
cataclysmic character of historical movements and 
fostered a superficial optimism of "progress" so- 
called. In truth every great moral advance of man- 
kind has been won in blood and flame and tears. 
The Kingdom of the spirit comes with power, but 
in conflict and suffering. Mankind grows very 
slowly more rational and moral, its rulers often more 
slowly than its masses. But the time when "the 
war drum throbs no longer and the battle flag is 
furled" is perhaps measurably nearer. Through 
crises and suffering the Kingdom comes, and per- 
haps with each crisis more fully ; the forces of discord 
are still abroad and doubtless will bring fresh con- 
flicts and further judgments. We in the United 
States to-day may be walking on the crust which con- 
ceals a volcanic eruption of the forces of those who 



242 JESUS CHRIST AND CIVILIZATION OF TO-DAY 

have not against those who have. But, if the King- 
dom of justice and love comes first with power in the 
hearts of many individuals, it will be saved from 
coming Mdth blood and ruin as in former days and as 
it is even now coming in Russia. 

Perhaps these remarks will have illustrated what 
I mean by saying that the eschatological element, 
the faith in a consummation, which is at the same 
time a judgment of the existing order, is of necessity 
part and parcel of the ethical teachings of Christ 
and that the recognition thereof, so far from destroy- 
ing the relevancy of his teaching to the life of ci\dliza- 
tion to-day, a thousandfold enhances that relevancy. 
If the principles of Jesus Christ are absolutely 
supreme, then his Kingdom must come both to the 
individual and the world. The only alternative to 
this assumption is a moral indifference and pessi- 
mism. 



INDEX TO NAMES AND SUBJECTS 



Ameer AH, Syed, i88, 190. 
Aristotle, 58. 

Art and Spiritual Life, 68 69 fif. 
Augustine, St., 8, 220. 

Baldwin, J. M., 181 n. 

Beal, S., 199 n. 

Birth, new, in individual, 86. 

Bousset, W., 185 n., 231 n., 234 n., 
240 n. 

Brahma, 191 n. 

Brahmanism, 192. 

Browning, 60, 61, 62, 79. 

Buddha, 183, 190 fiF.; — , Socrates, 
and Christ, 59. 

Buddhism, and Christianity, 190 
ff.; — , Chinese, 199 ff.; — in 
Thibet, Nepal, Ceylon, Burma, 
198; — , Japanese, 202 ff.; — 
and social progress, 211 ff. 

Caird, E., 141 n. 

Chant apie de la Saussaye, 197 n., 

199 n. 
Character and Heredity, 43 ff. 
Charles, 136, 229 n. 
Cheynes' Encyclopedia Bihlica, 

234 n. 
Class, G., 141 n. 
Compensation, Jesus' doctrine of, 

IIS- 
Confucianism, 200. 
Conservative school, 17. 
Critical school, 17 ff, 

Dalman, C, 230 n. 

Darwinian theory, 3. 

Demoniacal possession, 27. 

Descartes, 8, 58. 

Determinism in conduct, 36, 37 ff. 



Deussen, P., 192 n. 

Dhyina, 207. 

Douglas, R. K., 200 n. i and 2. 

DuaUsm in Ethics, 5, 7 ff., 7 n., 

24. 
Driver, 230 n. 

Eliot, George, 128. 

Enoch, Book of, 229 n., 231 n. 

Epicureans, 167 ff. 

Eschatology of Jesus, 225 flf., 

235 ff. ; — and the activities of 

civilization, 225-226, 238 ff. 
Ethical Systems, influence of 

other, compared with that of 

Jesus, 166 ff., 175 ff. 
Ethics and Immortality, 129 ff. 
Eucken, Rudolf, 109, 141 n. 
Evil, Moral, as treated by Jesus, 

157 ff.; — and the individual 

will, 159 ff. 
Evil, physical, 26 ff. 

Faith, 180. 

Faith in God and Jesus' influence, 

150 ff. 

Fielding, H., 198 n. 

Forgiveness, 108. 

Freedom, consciousness of, and 
determinism, 37 ff.; — , reality 
of, 44 ff.; — , Jesus' appeal to, 
47 ; — , limitations of, 50 ff . ; — , 
actual, nature of, 52 ff. ; — and 
supreme spiritual life, 54. 

French Revolution, 241. 

God, as Ethical Goodness and 
Love, 124 ff.; God, Idea of, 
139 ff.; — as unity of the uni- 
verse, 141 ff.; — as unity of 



243 



244 



INDEX TO NAMES AND SUBJECTS 



experience, 143 ff.; — as world- 
consciousness, 144; — as ethical 
purpose, 147 ff. ; — as moral 
order of the universe, 149 ff. ; — . 
Jesus' idea of, 150 ff. ; — , faith 
in, as due to influence of Jesus' 
personality, 150 ff. 

Gospels, dates of, and authenticity 
of Jesus' teaching, 9 ff. 

Gotarna, see Buddha. 

Griffis, W. E., 203 n., 205 n. 

Giilick, S. L., 208 n. 

Hastings' Dictionary 0} the Bible, 

231 n., 234 n. 
Hegel, 181. 
Herder, 181. 

Hindu metaphysics, 191-192 n. 
Humanity and Social Service, 104; 

— and the Klingdom of Heaven, 
117; — , faith in ideal, 82 ff. 

Huxley, Thomas H., 25. 

ImmortaUty, and Ethics, 129; — , 
belief in, as judgment of value, 
129; — , Jesus on, 129, 133 ff. 

Imperfections of Life, 120 ff. ; — 
and immortality, 127 ff. 

Individual, place of, among the 
Greeks, 56; — , place of, among 
the Hebrews, 56 ff. ; — , moral 
worth of, 56 ff., 62, 108, 115 ff.; 

— and the Protestant reformers, 
58; — , nature of, 63 ff.; — and 
art, 68 ff. ; — and over-in- 
dividual Hfe, 70; — , Jesus and, 
70 ff. ; — , spiritual Hfe in, child- 
like quality of, 74, 75. 

Individual life as social, 109 ff. 

Individual spiritual Hfe, inward- 
ness of, 75, 76; — , disinterested- 
ness of, 76 ff. ; — , rewards of, 
77 ff.; — , inner integrity of, 79 
ff.; — , reaHty as quality of, 82. 

Individual wiU and moral evil, 
159 ff. 

IndividuaHty, and impulse, 64; — 
and egoism, 65; — and 
Nietzsche, 67, 68. 



Jesus, personaHty of, historical 
witnesses to reaHty of, 9 ff.; — 
and the three stages of Hfe, 29; 

— and nature, 29 ff.; — appeal 
to freedom and accountabiHty, 
47 ff . ; — and the heart of man, 
49 ff., 53 ; — and the PubHcan, 
51 ; — and the Pharisee, 51 ; — 
and the individual soul, 70 ff.; 

— and the supreme end of Hfe, 
73 ff. ; — and spiritual Hfe in 
the individual, 74 ff. ; — tests 
the wlLL of man, 84; — , social 
teaching of, 95 ff.; — on mar- 
riage, 95; — and the current 
Messianic ideal, 96 ff., 98 ff.; 

— teaching, social effects of, 
100. 

Jesus' principles of social life, 
103 ff., 115 ff.; — , significance 
of his death, in ff. ; — , social 
mysticism of, 113 ff.; — doc- 
trine of compensation, 115; — 
idea of God, 150 ff.; — , in- 
fluence of his personaHty in 
arousing faith in God, 150 ff.; 
— , treatment of moral evil by, 
157 ff. ; — , influence of, com- 
pared with ethical systems, 166 
ff., 175 ff.; — and the Stoics, 
and the Epicureans, 168 ff.; — 
and Plato, 169 ff.; — and Kant, 
176; — and Mohammed, 185 
ff. ; — and Buddha, 193 ff.; — 
the Christ, as the absolute reve- 
lation of the spiritual meaning 
of human Hfe, 215 ff.; — as 
revealer, 216; — , his unique 
relation to God, 216 ff. ; — , his 
unique God-consciousness, 218 
ff. ; — , entire harmony of his 
wiU with God's will, 219 ff. ; — , 
relation of his moral perfection 
to his religious insight, 221 ff.; 
— , does he differ from other 
men in degree only, or in kind ? 
220; — , his ethical unity with 
God, the Father, 223 ff.; — , 
temptation of, 228; — , Mas- 



INDEX TO NAMES AND SUBJECTS 



245 



sianic consciousness of, 98, 
226 ff. 

Judaism, 183. 

Judgment and final triumph of 
Jesus' principles as moral postu- 
late of faith, 236 ff. 

Judgments moral, great historical 
crises as, 240 ff. 



Kant, 149, 176, 181. 

Karma, 195, 209 ff.; — and the 

Christian principle of moral 

freedom, 210. 
Kingdom of God, 17, 97, 226, 

234 ff . ; — , see also under God 

and Jesus. 
Kingdom of Heaven, 88, 99 ff., 

117 ff. 
Kingdom of Jesus, its coming in 

history, 240 ff. 
Kipling, Rttdyard, 78. 
Knox, G. W., 203 n., 207 n. 3. 
Kocheba, Simon bar, 97. 

Labourers in the Vineyard, para- 
ble of, 77. 

Lao-tsze, 200 ff. 

Lehmann, Edv., 197 n. 

Life, critical epochs in, 28; — , 
first stage in, 28; — , second 
stage in, 28, 29; — , third stage 
in, 29; — , Jesus and the three 
stages of, 29, 30 ; — , conduct of 
the individual, 57 ff.; — , con- 
duct of the social, 89 ff. 

Lloyd, A., 205 n., 206 n. i. 

Love as motive in Buddhism, and 
in the Gospel of Jesus, 211 ff. 

Mahayana, 198. 

Man and his environment, 31 ff,, 
35 ff- ; — , the heart of, 35 ff ., 49. 
ManichcEanism, 7. 
Marriage, Jesus on, 95. 
Martineau, J., 141 n. 
Mazdaism, 234. 
Mediaeval ethics, 5. 
Meister Eckhart, 215. 



Messiah, 17, 98, 226 ff. 

Messianic consciousness of Jesus, 
98, 227 ff.; — , see also Son of 
Man. 

Messianic Kingdom, 99 ff., 225 ff. 

Metaphysics, 1 91-192 n. 

Middle Ages, the, 24, 241. 

Mithraism, 7. 

Modern man, the, and nature, 
25 ff. 

Moffatt, James, quoted, 13-16. 

Mohammed, 185 ff.; — and 
Jesus, 189 ff. 

Mohammedanism, 183; — as a 
moral force in society and his- 
tory, 186 ff. 

Moral growth after death, 136. 

More, Sir Thomas, 95, 178. 

Moses, 20, 183. 

Muir, Sir William, 190 n. 

Mysticism, unsocial and social, 
compared, 113 ff.; — of Jesus, 
a social and historical mysti- 
cism, 113 ff. 

Neoplatonism, 7 n, 8. 
Nichiren sect, 206. 
Nietzsche, Fr., 3, 66, 67. 
Nirvana, 195, 196 n. 

Obligation, significance of feeling 

of, 37- 
Okakura-Y oshisaburo, 207 n. i 

and 2. 
Oldenburg, Hermann, 190, 196 n. 

Paul, St., 8, 212. 

Persian idea of a Messiah, 234. 

Personality, as historical cause, 
10 ff. ; — , unity and uniqueness 
of, 38 ff., 45; — , unity of, as 
condition of knowledge, 39; — , 
unity of, as condition of action, 
39 ff.; — and social environ- 
ment, 40 ff.; — , creative, 41 ff.; 
— and psychological analysis, 
45-47; — in the History of 
Religion, 179 ff.- — and social 
life, 181 ff. 



246 



INDEX TO NAMES AND SUBJECTS 



Plato, 95, 178; — and Jestis, 

169 ff. 
Protestant reformers, the, 58. 
Psychical research and spiritual 

immortality, 131. 
Punishment hereafter, 135 ff.; — 

everlasting, 136 ff. 

Religion and Personality, 179 flf. 
Renaissance, 69. 
Reward, eternal, 134 fE. 
Rhys-Davids, 195 n., 196 n. 
Royce, J., 141 n., 181 n., 222 n. 
Russia, present conditions in, 241. 

Samsara, 195. 

Samurai ethics, 205. 

Sanday, W., 229 n., 240 n. 

Saoshyant, 234. 

Schmidt, N., 18 n., 232 n. 

Self, see Individual and Per- 
sonality. 

SeK-Perfection, ethics of, 172. 

Service, Jesus' principle of, 103 £f., 
119. 

Shinshu, sect, 206, 208. 

Shinto, 205. 

Siebeck, H., 141 n. 

Sin, 124 ff. 

Smith, A. H., 200 n. 

Social ethics, principles of, 94. 

Social questions, 89 ff.; — ethical 
aspects of, 91 flf. 

Social teaching of Jesus, 95 ff., 
103 flf.; — and the Messianic 
ideal, 96 flf. 



Socrates, 169. 

Son of God, 16, 224. 

Son of Man, 16 flf., 229 ff. 

Spirit and nature, 24, 30 flf.; — , 

JesuG' view of their relation, 

25 flf., 29 flf. 
Stevenson, R. L., 62. 
Struggle for existence, the, 4, 

23- 

Talents, parable of the, 81. 
Tauter, John, 215 n. 
Theologische Rundschau, 240 n. 
Thirty Years' War, 241. 

Unjust Steward, parable of, 81. 
Upanishads, 191. 
Utilitarian Ethics, 173 flf. 

Value, judgments of, 129 flf. 
Vedas, 191. 

Ward, J., 141 n. 

Warren, H. C, 195 n. 

Weiss, J., 240 n. 

West and East, 213. 

Win, freedom of, 35 flf., 45, 47; 

— , Jesus' severe tests of, 84 

flf. 
Williams, S. Wells, 200 n. 
Worship of Divine Perfection as 

principle of jvistification, 124, 

126. 

Zen sect, 206, 207. 
Zoroastriamsm, 7. 



INDEX TO TEXTS 



Psalms, 2, 8 . 
Isaiah, 53 
Ezekiel, 18 : 20 
Daniel, 7 : 13 

MATTHEW 
4 : i-io 

■ 4 ' 
■7 . 



9 . 

12 

24 

27, 28 

29 

42 

44 

45 

48 



6 : 10 
6 : 21 



22 
32 
I . 

3 • 

II 

6 : II 

8:20 

8:22 

10:23 

10 :28 

10 :3i 

10 : 34 

10 : 41 

11 : 27 

11 :28 

12 :8 . 
12 :3i, 32 
12 : 34, 35 
13:15 
13:57 
15:11 

15 : 19 



25 



81 



229 
231 

57 
229 

PAGE 

227 

27 

no 

71 

nor 

77 
no 

71 

133, 135 
. 104 

72, 109 

73, 109 
73, 220 

• 77 

• 49 
28, 71 

. 152 
81, 163 

. 81 

. 152 
98, 220 

. 18 
84, 226 

. 235 

135, 158 
. 129 

48, 73 

• 77 
219, 230 

. 219 
. 18 

136, 221 
. 76 
50, 98 
. 98 
. 49 

49. 75 



MATTHEW 
16 : 13, 20 
16 : 24 
27, 28 
5 • 
3 • 
6 

9 



16 

17 
18 
18 
18 
18: II 

18 : 22 

19 : 4-1 I 
19 : 19 

19 : 21 

20 : 1-16 
20 : 26 

20 : 28 

21 :37 

22 : 21 
22: 30 
22 132 
22 :39 

22 :45 

23 : 8, 9 
2s : 8-10 
23 '■ II 
23 : 12 
23:27 

23 :37 

24 : 27-44 

24:35 

25 : 15-30 
25 : 31-46 
25 :34 

25 :40 

26 : 24 
26:39 
26 : 64 



MARK 

2 : 28 
7 : 21 



48, 



84, 



PAGE 

100 

48 

), 235 

230 

74 

72 

159 
178 
108 
95 
108 
104 

77 
103 

18 
230 

95 
133, 226 

152, 177 
108 
98 

71 
221 
103, III 
103 

76 

98 
225, 236 
95. 106 

81 
134 
133 
220 

18 
220 
225 



PAGE 
75 



247 



248 



INDEX TO TEXTS 



HARK PAGE 

8:34 48 

9:1 235 

9:7 230 

9 :42 72, 136 

9:43,45.47 135 

10:7 221 

10 : IS 74 

10 : 17 ^33 

10 : 21 84 

10 •• 29, 30 77 

10:43. 45 .... 103, III 

12 : 25 133 

12:27 152, 177 

13 : 8, 24-27 225 

13 : 26 236 

^3-3^^ 95 

14:25 230 

14 : 62 225 

LUKE PAGE 

4:1-13 227 

4:18 178 

5:31 178 

6 : 20, 21 27 

6:23 77 

6 : 30 104 

6 : 45 .... 48, 49. 75 

9 : 18-21 100 

9:27 235 

9:48 74 

10 : 29 105 

11:2 77 

11 : II 129 

11:39 76 

12:5 135 

12 : 8-10 230 

12:14 95 

12 : 15 54 

12 : 34 49 

12 : 40 225 

12 :48 .... 81, 136, 159 

12:51 73 

13:4 26, 158 

13 : 18-21 26 

13 : 25-30 81 

13 : 29 220 

14 : II 103 

14 : 13 104 

14 : 26 48, 226 



LUKE PAGE 

16:1-8 81 

16:25 ff 115 

17 : 10 123 

17 : 20, 21 235 

17:21 134 

17:24-30 225 

17 : 30 230 

18 : 8 230 

18 : 9-14 124 

18 : 16 74 

18:17 74 

18 : 19 ....... 221 

18 : 22 226 

19 : 11-28 236 

20:35-36 133 

20 : 44 98 

21 : 27 225, 236 

21:33 95 

21 : 36 225 

22 : 16-18 225 

22 : 18 230 

22 : 26 Ill 

22 : 29 220 

JOHN PAGE 

3 : 6, 7 73 

3:8 60 

5:17 76 

6 : 62 . . . . J . . 230 

7 : 17 86 

8 : 46 221 

9:3 27 

10 : 10 54 

12 : 16 14 

12 : 24 112 

12 : 40 98 

13 : 31 230 

14 : 26 14 

15:5 112 

16 : 13 14 

18 : 36 106 

20 : 17 220 

FIRST CORINTHLANS PAGE 

7:31 106 

13 :oo 212 

SECOND CORINTHIANS PAGE 

3:3 14 



TOUCHING THE RELATIONS OF CHRIST 
TO OUR MODERN LIFE 

T^hese books are of special 'value : — 
By WALTER RAUSCHENBUSCH 

Professor of Church History in Rochester Theological Seminary y 
formerly Pastor of the Second German Baptist Church, Man- 
hattan, New York 

CHRISTIANITY AND 
THE SOCIAL CRISIS 

The aim of the book is to show the fundamental purpose of Chris- 
tianity to transform human society into the kingdom of God by recon- 
structing all human relations ; to show the past and present rela- 
tions of the church to this essential purpose ; and to indicate the 
tendencies and possibilities of the future. It is a strong plea for the 
religious life which does not withdraw from the world, but renews it. 

Cloth, 1 2 mo, 42g pp.^ti.50 net 

By HENRY S. NASH 

Professor of New Testament Interpretation in the Episcopal 
Theological School at Cambridge 

GENESIS OF THE 
SOCIAL CONSCIENCE 

The theme is the relation between the establishment of Christianity 
in Europe and the Social Question. 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 

ETHICS AND REVELATION 

"This is a great book. It is a poem in prose, a study in English — 
felicitous and forcible, a study in history and sociology, in the sub- 
jective spiritual life, and in ecclesiastical fundamentals. The author 
is a rare rhetorician and guides one through gardens of beauty, but 
they are gardens among the mountains. . . . Every word of the 
six lectures should be read by thoughtful men of the day, ministers 
and laymen, believers and sceptics." — John H. Vincent. 

Cloth, l2mo, $1.50 



By FRANCIS G. PEABODY 

Plummtr Professor of Christian Morals in Harvard University 

JESUS CHRIST AND THE 
CHRISTIAN CHARACTER 

AN EXAMINATION OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS IN ITS RELATION 
TO SOME OF THE MORAL PROBLEMS OF PERSONAL LIFE 

" One of the most striking features of naodern addresses and sermons 
is their practical character. . . . This is set forth very emphatically 
in one of the most remarkable books in the religious literature of 
1905, Professor F. G. Peabody's 'Lyman Beecher' lectures for 1904 
at Yale University. . . . The lectures are full of power and present a 
study of Christian ethics which is truly inspiring." — Independent. 

Cloth, I2m0f $1.^0 ;z^/ (postage iic.) 
JESUS CHRIST AND THE SOCIAL QUESTION 

AN EXAMINATION OF THE TEACHING OF JESUS IN ITS RELATION 
TO SOME PROBLEMS OF MODERN SOCIAL LIFE 

" It is vital, searching, comprehensive. The Christian reader will find 
it an illumination ; the non-Christian, a revelation." — The Epworth 
Herald, 

Cloth, I2mo, $1.^0 

THE RELIGION OF AN EDUCATED MAN 

RELIGION AS EDUCATION — CHRIST'S MESSAGE TO THE SCHOLAR 
— KNOWLEDGE AND SERVICE 

"The lectures are a distinct contribution to a branch of literature of 
which we stand in great need." — Boston Transcript. 

Cloth y i2mo, $1.00 net (postage 7c.) 



By GEORGE B. STEVENS Yale University 

THE TEACHING OF JESUS {Ne^ Testament Handbooks') 

" It is clear, forcible, free from dogmatic speculation, going always 
straight to the heart of things, and trying to stay there." — The 
Churchman. 

Cloth, i2mo, 75 cents net 



By S. D. M'CONNELL, D.D., 

Rector of All Souls' Churchy New York 

CHRIST 

" Dr. M'Connell sees clearly, and the great value of his book is that 
he makes the reader feel, that something is lacking in the way the 
Gospel is being presented to the modern man. ... In his opening 
chapter Dr. M'Connell points out in the clearest way the failure of 
any purely naturaHstic and humanitarian interpretation of the life of 
Christ." — The Churchman. 

Cloth y I2?n0j $1.2^ net 



By SHAILER MATHEWS 

Professor of Historical and Comparative Theology in the Univer- 
sity of Chicago 

THE SOCIAL TEACHINGS OF JESUS 

AN ESSAY IN CHRISTIAN SOCIOLOGY 

"The author is scholarly, devout, awake to all modern thought, and 
yet conservative and preeminently sane." — Congregationalist. 

Cloth, i2mo, 75 cefits net 
THE CHURCH AND THE CHANGING ORDER 

The present crisis in the church is discussed under such phases as : 
The Church and Scholarship ; The Church and the Historical Gospel ; 
The Church and Materialism ; The Church and Social Discontent ; 
The Church and the Larger Fraternity ; The Church and Social 
Leadership. Though stating clearly the danger to the church of an 
unscientific spirit and lack of sympathy with social movements, the 
whole spirit of the book is constructive. In preparation. 



By NEWELL DWIGHT HILLIS 

Pastor of Plymouth Churchy Brooklyn 

THE INFLUENCE OF CHRIST IN MODERN LIFE 

A STUDY OF THE NEW PROBLEMS OF THE CHURCH IN MODERN 
SOCIETY 

" Every eloquent chapter is a spiritual uplift and a strengthener of 
faith in the unique claims and character of our Lord Jesus Christ." — 
Epworth Herald. 

Clothf i2mo, $1.^0 



By HENRY C. KING 

President of Oberlin College 

PERSONAL AND IDEAL ELEMENTS 
IN EDUCATION 

"I am reading it with great profit. It is a magnificent utterance." 
— William. F. Anderson, Sec'y, Board of Education of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal Church. 

Cloth, i2mo, $1.^0 net (postage iic.) 

RECONSTRUCTION IN THEOLOGY 

"Its pages represent what is nearly if not actually the highwater 
mark of skill and success in blending a fearless yet discriminating 
progressiveness with a loyal conservatism in theology." — The Con- 
gregationalist. 

Cloth, I2mo, $1.^0 

THEOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS 

"A valuable contribution to current discussion ... it is not scho- 
lastic ; it is not phrased in the technical language of the schools ; the 
thoughtful layman ^ill readily understand it." — The Outlook. 

Cloth, cr. 8vo, $1.2^ net 
RATIONAL LIVING 

" As a constructive piece of work, making rehgiously available the 
results of contv,uiporary researches in mind, the value of ' Rational 
Living ' is tremendous. At this time particularly, the rehgious teacher 
needs just what he finds in 'Rational Li^^ng' — a book sure, one 
thinks, to quicken the minister and his sermons and his people. — 
Arthur R. Taylor, Rector, Trinity Memorial Church, Warren, Penn- 
sylvania. , / . \ 
Cloth, i2mo, $ I.2S net (postage 1 2c.) 



All of the preceding are published by 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



MAY 141907 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: June 2005 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6065 
(724) 779-21 -"i 



